


The Story of Us

by rillrill



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-12
Updated: 2012-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 05:06:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben is new to Pawnee High School. Leslie’s the president of the dance and event planning committee. It’s definitely not love at first sight, but if anyone can liven up his junior year, it’s a certain blonde overachiever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i am gonna make it through this year (if it kills me)

So this probably isn’t the worst thing his parents have ever done to him. The worst was probably when they made him enter that “If I were the President…” essay contest in elementary school and he won and he had to go to the White House and meet the president on TV, and then he was on the Today Show and he accidentally spilled a glass of water on his pants right before his interview and it looked like he’d peed himself in front of Katie Couric. If being “Boy President Benjy Wyatt” wasn’t bad enough, being “Pee-Pee President Benjy Wyatt” definitely was. But yeah, this? This is definitely top five. Maybe even top three.

Ben’s lived in Indianapolis his entire life. He _likes_ Indianapolis. He likes his school and he likes his house, and now that he’s finally starting to shake the “pee-pee president” thing, he thinks he might have a shot at actually being kind of cool now that he’s going into his junior year. But the summer before junior year, just a few weeks before school’s about to start, his dad finds out that he’s being transferred to the Pawnee outpost of the insurance company he works for. It’s a much better job, he says, and they’ll be making a lot more money, so that way his mom can cut back on her hours at the office. And before he has a chance to argue his side (that people are kind of starting to think he’s cool now, yeah, whatever, even he knows it sounds bad), the contracts are signed and they’re driving off to Pawnee on the weekends to look at houses.

 

*

 

**THINGS BEN WYATT IS INTO (August 25th)**

 1. The Smiths  
 2. Ray Bradbury  
  **3\. NOT PAWNEE**

 

*

 

The first day of school is predictably lame.

Pawnee High doesn’t have an IB program, so he’s stuck taking regular AP classes instead. When he lines up with everyone else at the long tables in the cafeteria to pick up his schedule, he’s annoyed to see that he has AP calc first period (he’s good at math, but not first thing in the morning) and lunch isn’t until sixth period. He’s then sent to the office to get his picture taken for a school I.D., and when he finally arrives in his homeroom, he’s stuck in the front row due to being late instead of his usual back-row, alphabetical-order seat. When he finally slides into his seat, he’s already irritated, and there’s a blonde girl right behind him who’s talking kind of loudly with her friend, even after the P.A. system sputters to life and the principal starts welcoming them all to a bright new year.

The other kids might have heard it all before, but he’s new and doesn’t want to miss any pertinent bits of information, such as where you’re supposed to go to get your I.D. after it’s made or whether he’s allowed to go off-campus for lunch, so after a few seconds of the girls behind him continuing to chatter at a normal volume, he turns around and snaps, “Can you guys keep it down? I can’t hear what they’re saying.”

Both girls look at him like he’s just said something unspeakably nasty, and the blonde rolls her eyes. “Fine,” she snaps back, and then mutters under her breath, “jerk.”

Her brunette friend snickers and then scribbles something on a piece of paper, and they keep passing notes for what Ben assumes is the rest of the period. Whatever. At least they shut up.

 

*

 

The rest of the day is fairly unremarkable. He keeps his head down throughout most of his classes, buys some kind of disgusting candy bar from a vending machine for lunch (it’s supposed to have some kind of energizing ingredients, but the veracity of this claim seems dubious), and goes straight home after school. The first day is always easy – icebreakers and get-to-know-you games and endless syllabi, mostly – but as far as he can tell, he’s the only new kid in most of his classes, and since almost everybody already seems to know each other, they don’t seem super interested in New Ben From Indianapolis’ life story. 

(Actually, that’s a lie. There is one other new kid, and he seems incredibly interested in Ben’s life story, but he kind of acts like that toward everyone – he’s that weirdo who asks everyone questions, and Ben has a feeling that if the dude weren’t also super good-looking, he’d be the world’s biggest loser. But by the end of their last class together, of which they have three, Chris Traeger already seems to have a whole group of friends, and Ben only has himself and the wrapper of his gross Sweetums “cotton candy protein bar,” so maybe he’s not really in the position to be casting any stones here.)

 

*

 

By the third week of school, Ben has made exactly three friends:

  1. Chris Traeger, who doesn’t count for aforementioned reasons  
 2. This one weird dude named Carl Lorthner, who has no indoor voice but ate lunch with him like three times  
 3. This other dude from his homeroom, Andy Dwyer, who actually seems like a decent guy even though he’s obviously dumb as a box of rocks

Andy is the one who convinces him to come to the dance committee meeting for the Harvest Fest Fall Fling (Sponsored by Sweetums™), which is apparently what they have to call the homecoming dance. He doesn’t really want to go, but he’s definitely not in any position to turn down friends, so he shows up in room 223 after school that Friday for the meeting. 

The first thing he notices when he walks inside is that the room is mostly filled with people he’s never seen before. Andy’s there, yeah, but he’s hanging out with this teeny, skinny dark-haired girl who looks kind of artsy and mean, and Chris is there (of course he’s there), but he’s just bopping all over the place, talking to seemingly everyone who catches his eye. That’s it for people Ben knows. Except – 

Oh, God. Yeah, the blonde making a list of meeting objectives on the whiteboard? That’s totally the girl he snapped at his first day in homeroom. He tries to make a quick escape, but before he can leave, Andy spots him and waves him over. 

“Ben!” he yells, offering a high-five, which Ben accepts wanly. “Dude! What is up?”

“Not much,” Ben says, giving him a noncommittal shrug. “How are you?”

“Uh, I left a bag of Skittles in my car and they all melted together into one giant super-Skittle, so I guess you could say _awesome_ ,” Andy says. 

(It’s moments like this that Ben doesn’t know whether to ask Andy whether he’s serious or just go with it, assuming that he’s for real.)

They chat for a few more minutes until the blonde at the front of the classroom finally yells for everyone’s attention. “Attention!” She yells. “I’m Leslie Knope, president of this year’s dance committee, and I hereby call this meeting to order.” She gestures to the brunette by her side. “And I’d also like to introduce my best friend, the beautiful Ann Perkins, who will be taking minutes for this meeting and also every other meeting this year because she’s the secretary.” 

They pass around a sign-in sheet, and Leslie takes a few suggestions for themes. One kid suggests “strip club” and his friend high-fives him and then suggests “Kim Kardashian strip club,” and Ben rolls his eyes so hard he’s briefly afraid that he’s going to have to go chase them down the hallway. The girl holding hands with Andy suggests “clown orgy” with a totally straight face and it’s kind of hard to tell if she’s kidding, but Andy laughs hard. Another girl suggests a Twilight theme and both the guys turn around to high-five her. Ben wonders why the teacher (whom he _thinks_ teaches government, but he’s not sure) who seems to be in charge doesn’t say anything about all these obviously inappropriate suggestions, but he’s just sitting in a corner of the classroom, stroking his mustache with one hand and flipping through some enormous hardbound book with the other, looking supremely bored.

For her part, Leslie seems to be handling the dumb suggestions with aplomb, and she soon starts to spitball some of her own ideas around the room – scarecrow theme! No, scarecrows might be too creepy to base a whole dance around – how about corn-themed? Finally, Ben raises his hand.

“Why don’t we just do a barn dance theme?” he asks when she calls on him. “We could have scarecrows _and_ corn and, I don’t know, old West stuff. I think that’d be fun.”

Leslie rolls her eyes, but Chris is nodding emphatically from beside him. “That is literally the best idea I’ve heard so far,” he says. “Everyone else had great ideas too, but that one just takes the cake, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Fine, Ann, write it down,” Leslie says dismissively. They put it up for an anonymous vote (heads-down arms-up style), and despite the Twilight theme getting a solid six votes, Barn Dance comes out with the most tallies beside it after they’ve all been counted. Andy rushes across the room to give him an emphatic high-five, and Ben leaves the meeting with a grin on his face, riding the buzz of actually having accomplished something.

It’s the first time he’s been happy since he moved to Pawnee, he realizes.

 

*

 

**THINGS BEN WYATT IS INTO (September 16th)**

 1. Apocalypse movies  
 2. Kurt Vonnegut  
 3. Still not Pawnee (but maybe some of the people are okay)

*

 

Here’s the thing about Leslie Knope: she’s kind of super bossy.

Here’s the other thing about Leslie Knope: she does not take no for an answer.

Here’s the _other_ other thing about Leslie Knope: she’s usually right.

The homecoming committee runs out of money for the dance, as usual, so she bugs Mr. Swanson to get the office to give them more. They only need $500 extra, but she can’t tell anyone what it’s for because, she says, “It’s a surprise, but an awesome one. Just trust me.” Mr. Swanson says no, of course, so she does the next best thing: she organizes a rogue bake sale to raise the money, stays up until 4 a.m. the night before baking and frosting cupcakes, and brings her own card tables to school and sets them all up right outside the cafeteria herself. The rest of the committee shows up with their own baked goods, and as Ben sets down a tray of Rice Krispie treats (the only thing he knows how to make), Leslie crinkles her nose and says, “Really? Rice Krispie treats? Nice going, Ben.”

“Well, we’ll see how they do,” Ben shrugs. 

(They do horribly, but they’re not the worst selling item – that honor goes to Jerry Gergich’s homemade raisin cakes. Even Leslie’s like, “Jerry, these are gross” and moves them down to the end of the table.)

By the end of the bake sale – which is shut down by Principal Gunderson as soon as the administration gets wind of what’s happening – they’ve raised $643. “Never underestimate the power of cake,” Leslie says triumphantly as she closes the metal cash box.

“Finally, an upside to going to the fourth most obese high school in America,” Ann says, wrapping up the leftover raisin cakes. “So do we have enough?”

“Yep,” Leslie grins. “We totally have enough.”

 

*

 

Pawnee High loses the big homecoming game to Eagleton. Actually, loses isn’t quite the word – Eagleton pretty much wipes the floor with Pawnee’s defense. By the end of the game, morale at PHS closely resembles that of the citizens of Whoville right after they came downstairs to find that the Grinch had stolen Christmas. Ben doesn’t really have a horse in this race either way, considering that he doesn’t understand football and he’s only lived in Pawnee for a couple months, but even so, watching the team slump off the field after the fourth quarter is straight-up _depressing_.

But hey, there’s a dance afterward. And Leslie Knope has gone out of her way to make the Harvest Fest Fall Fling (Sponsored by Sweetums™) the perfect pick-me-up after the depressing game. Ben organized the ticket sales; Tom and Jean-Ralphio hired the DJ – “We know a guy who’s totally dope and he’ll do it for cheap ‘cause he’s super broke” – and April and Andy made all the scarecrows and threw a bunch of hay around the floor; Chris and Donna bought all the refreshments and Jerry did… something. But Leslie and Ann have been working tirelessly to put on a great dance, and it shows. When Ben sees the two girls roll into the dance together, Leslie in blue-and-white polka dots with her hair in curls and Ann in a canary yellow dress and sparkly high heels, he heads over immediately to congratulate them.

“You know, you guys really pulled it together,” he says as he approaches them. “This dance is amazing.”

Ann grins. “It was all Leslie, really,” she says. “I just kind of do what she tells me.”

“Oh, come on, Ann,” Leslie admonishes her. “You’re beautiful and you’re competent! The best right-hand woman anyone could ask for.” Then she turns to Ben. “By the way, great work on ticket duty. We’re kicking last year’s homecoming attendance’s ass. And I gotta say, that shirt is amazing.”

Ben smirks and looks down at his button-down, turquoise and white plaid with a bit of red running through it. “Oh, thanks,” he says offhandedly. “I got it at the Eagleton Mall, actually.”

He realizes he’s said the wrong thing when both the girls look at him as if he’s just admitted to murdering six children in cold blood. “Eagleton?” Leslie says, disgusted. “And you wore it tonight?”

“Seriously, dude?” Ann interjects. “Way to class up the joint.”

“I’m sorry!” he protests. “I didn’t know – I haven’t lived here that long.” But they’ve already turned on their heels and walked off into the crowd, chattering amongst themselves intently. The DJ is playing a Rihanna song, something with a lot of bass and lyrics that sound like “Can you get it up” and “Is you big enough,” and halfway across the room, Ben can see Leslie grab Ann’s hand as they start doing some kind of stupid, inside joke-y dance. He sighs. Way to blow it, Wyatt.

Wait. Blow it? Because he does not like Leslie Knope. Well, he likes her, but he doesn’t _like_ her. He doesn’t _like_ her in the way that requires italics (or italics of the mind), at least. She’s super bossy and kind of a know-it-all in AP World, always going on about why Eleanor Roosevelt deserves more credit for ending World War II, and besides, she doesn’t really like him, either. He once overheard her refer to him as “Mean Ben” after a meeting one time. And, like, come on! Ann Perkins is way hotter! And nicer! But… Leslie is… Leslie. There’s no other way to explain it. And she does look really good tonight, in that blue dress that matches her eyes and her hair done up all nice, and…

 _Ugh. Fucking Christ, Wyatt. You do not like Leslie Knope._ Clearly he’s got to think about this later. Right now, however, Leslie is onstage, just about to announce the winners of the homecoming queen. Ben doesn’t know any of the nominees for king and queen, but he’s interested to see who wins prince and princess. Somehow, Chris Traeger has managed to score a nomination for prince, after attending the school for just over two months, and he’s up onstage with the others now, looking beatifically happy.

Leslie’s holding the envelope, with Ann at her side ready to pass out crowns. “Your nominees for homecoming prince,” she says, “are Mark Brendanawicz, Kelly Larson, Bobby Newport, and Chris Traeger.” She opens the envelope, pauses for dramatic effect, and announces, “And the winner is… ehh, Bobby Newport.” 

There’s a distinct look of annoyance on her face as she says this, but the whole room erupts in deafening cheers as Bobby Newport takes the crown from Ann, then waves to the room and does an air guitar solo. He looks like a gigantic douchebag. Ben doesn’t get it. (Chris doesn’t seem too upset, and he’s congratulating Bobby enthusiastically. At least he took it well.) Leslie calls out the nominees for homecoming princess – Joan Callamezzo, Marcia Langman, Shauna Malwae-Tweep, and Brandi Maxwell – and then hands the crown to Brandi, a busty blonde who looks like she could be the cartoonishly sexy version of Leslie in a Jessica Rabbit red gown. Ben feels kind of bad for Shauna, who’s in his English class and once asked to borrow a number two pencil during a test. She’s nice, and she looks a little crestfallen. He reminds himself to tell her that she should’ve won. But he’ll do that later.

Then Leslie announces that there’s one more surprise. “And this is kind of a big deal, guys,” she says, giddy in spite of herself. “I’m pleased to announce that we have with us tonight an actual celebrity… ladies and gentlemen, _Lil’ Sebastian_!”

Ben has no idea what Lil’ Sebastian is. But the crowd goes _absolutely fucking nuts_ over this – even louder than they did when Bobby Newport won. Even Mr. Swanson, who Ben has yet to see crack a single smile on any other occasion, is clapping and roaring along with the rest of the audience. And then Leslie and Ann walk off stage and return with an honest-to-god pony.

(Is it a pony? It looks kind of… _old_ for a pony.)

Bobby Newport is jumping up and down like a little kid and so is the rest of the homecoming court, and Lil’ Sebastian is wearing a tiny crown and a red velvet cape, and has Ben missed something? He kind of doesn’t get it. Actually, no: he really doesn’t get it. But apparently this is a Thing in Pawnee. So he shrugs and claps along with the rest of the audience, because everyone else is starting to look at him weird for not doing so.

 

*

 

The dance is starting to wind down – fifteen minutes until they have to shut it down and start cleaning up. Ben’s been hanging around the punch table all night, save for a few spins around the dance floor with Donna, and he’s starting to get kind of bored. Tom and Jean-Ralphio are handing out glow necklaces to the girls they deem the hottest, Andy and April are getting their picture taken with that damn mini-horse, and Chris and Shauna have apparently taken comfort in each other’s second-place company. He’s scanning the room, searching for someone he knows, but the only person he sees is Leslie, and, oh, might as well. 

She’s dancing to a Lady Gaga song in a group with Ann and a bunch of guys he doesn’t know, but he heads over there anyway. “Hey!” he yells over the music, catching her eye as he makes his way over to her side of the floor. “Can I cut in?”

She shrugs. “Be my guest,” she yells back, but then the song fades out and something by John Mayer (really? _John Mayer?!_ ) takes its place. It’s a lot slower, but Ben knows how to slow-dance – fine, he learned back in junior high when he had a crush on Lindsey Haddad – so he gives her a questioning look. She grins and takes his hand, and suddenly they’re dancing.

He’s dancing. With Leslie Knope. Kind of close, actually. 

(It’s not bad. It’s not OH MY GOD THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER, but it’s not bad.)

“Well,” he says, as they sway on the floor, “I gotta say. This night has been a complete success. Well done, Knope.”

She grins up at him (God, why is she so short?). “Thanks, Mean Ben,” she says, but her tone isn’t mean at all. “Sorry for, you know, being a jerk about your shirt before. Just – promise me you won’t go shopping in Eagleton again, ‘kay?”

“Only if you stop calling me ‘Mean Ben,’” he retorts. “I mean, when have I ever been mean to you?”

“The first day of school,” she says as he spins her, and he sighs.

“Well, yes,” he says sheepishly. “But other than that.”

Leslie shrugs. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just, I don’t know, a nickname that stuck. For what it’s worth, I don’t actually think you’re mean.”

“Well, thanks,” he says. “I don't think you're mean, either.” They’re dancing a little bit closer now and he can smell her perfume, which is sweet and vanilla-y and kind of smells like cookies. He likes it. (He does not like her.) Her hair looks really nice, too, all tousled with the curl falling out a bit. (He does not like her.) And from where he’s standing, a good five or six inches taller than her, he can totally see down her dress.

She’s looking at him kind of weird now, with her eyes a little bit hazy and glazed-over. He thinks she’s about to say something, but just as she opens her mouth, the song changes again, to T.I.’s “Whatever You Like.” 

_Fucking DJ._

“You know,” Ben yells over the noise, “the first time I heard this song? You know the line that goes ‘I want your body, need your body?’ I totally thought it was saying ‘I want Joe Biden, need Joe Biden.’”

Leslie tips her head back and laughs at this, a full-throated, giddy, delighted cackle, and grabs his hand. “Oh my God, me too!” she shouts. “I swear I thought I was the only one!”

She can’t stop giggling and they keep dancing together, a lot closer, and he’s got both hands on her hips as they gyrate to the music. It’s a pretty stupid song, but he’s never heard one he likes more.

 

*

 

The dance committee is technically supposed to stay until the clean-up operation is totally finished, but Mr. Swanson waves them off after about 45 minutes. They all start to disperse, and Ben is wandering off to the parking lot when he hears someone shout his name. “Ben!”

He turns to see Leslie and Ann running toward him, hand-in-hand, followed by April, Andy, Jean-Ralphio, Tom, and Donna. “Come on! We’re all going to JJ’s!”

Ben starts to stammer an excuse – he’s tired, he needs to get home – but Leslie shakes her head. “No excuses! You’re coming! Come on!” And when her eyes catch his, bright and gleaming in the glow of the overhead lights in the parking lot, he doesn’t really want to go home. He can probably go to JJ’s. Sure. Why not?

So they all squish into Donna’s Mercedes and pump the radio and head to Pawnee’s only 24-hour diner, where they crowd into a booth and push a table up next to it for everyone who doesn’t fit. Ben finds himself crowded into the side of the booth, with Leslie beside him and Ann on her other side and Tom right across from him, and, well, it’s not bad.

Okay, fine. Maybe Pawnee isn’t _that_ terrible.

 

*

 

**THINGS BEN WYATT IS INTO (Oct. 9th)**

  1. T.I.  
 2. Shetland Ponies?  
 3. ~~Leslie Knope~~ Blondes


	2. trick or treat

So he has a regular lunch table now.

It’s kind of weird, because he doesn’t really quite feel like one of the group yet. It’s not that everybody isn’t mostly nice to him, because they are – okay, April isn’t, but she’s not nice to anybody except Andy. And ever since Ben accidentally got way too involved in an argument about how Doctor Who isn’t just a “loser thing,” because it’s totally mainstream in the U.K., Tom’s taken every excuse to call him a nerd. But other than that, people are nice. But there are still times when they’ll all be laughing over an inside joke or shared experience, something about finding a dead raccoon in Ann’s pool the day of a big pool party or whatever, and he has no idea what’s going on. “Oh my God, I’m sorry, but you had to be there,” Leslie laughs, and he forces himself to shrug and smile and make a joke about how that’ll be his first stop once he gets his time machine up and running, which causes Tom to call him a nerd again and then they’re right back where they started.

It’s mid-October and he’s decided that he cannot have a crush on Leslie Knope. It’s not something that he’s going to allow himself to do, because, well, there are a lot of reasons. One is that he’s pretty sure Leslie doesn’t like him back. After homecoming (after their slow dance where he smelled her perfume and tried not to look down her dress, because he’s so not that kind of guy) he tried texting her more, but she didn’t really get involved in conversations. He’d send her little updates and anecdotes about how his day was going, and she’d just reply “lol!” or “that is amazing.” She didn’t say anything else, though, and she didn’t ever start conversations with him, so after about a week and a half he just gave up.

The other reason, the one that really holds him back, is that Leslie seems so _innocent_ sometimes. She’s the type of girl who sometimes says super dirty things, but honestly doesn’t realize they’re dirty, like that time Jerry was crunching his wint-o-green Lifesavers in her ear and she was all, “God, Jerry, can’t you just suck on that like a normal person?” Granted, _anyone_ would seem innocent compared to Tom’s dirty mind (and he’s always the first to point it out when any of them says something inadvertently gross), but it just… it feels wrong, somehow, with Leslie. Because even though she’s probably the most mature out of all of them – she gets straight As and still manages to be a part of every extracurricular that she qualifies for – she’s also the first one to get flustered when anybody brings up sex. So he has reservations there.

And then the _other_ reason – because there are three; there’s always three because that’s his favorite number – is that he’s not really sure what Leslie’s deal is, anyway. He never hears her talk about boys (except she has this crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt that Ann likes to tease her about, which is like, okay, the dude was good in Inception, but _really_?). He knows she had a boyfriend for a while, this guy Dave, but he graduated last year and then joined the Marines straight out of high school. But other than that? She and Ann are _always_ together. They walk around holding hands and hug for really long periods of time and they’re always braiding each others' hair, and Leslie calls her “Beautiful Ann” the way she used to call him “Mean Ben.” He’s not sure what that means. 

He knows Leslie’s part of the GSA (“I helped start a petition to abolish the rule that you couldn’t take somebody of the same sex to prom, because, I mean, _super_ retrograde!” “Yeah, that does seem retrograde…” “Well, girls still aren’t allowed to wear pants to dances. It’s a Pawnee thing.”), but she’s part of every club. And that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, anyway. He doesn’t want to make assumptions. He’s not going to make assumptions! He’s just… not going to have a crush on Leslie Knope.

That'll work, yeah.

 

*

 

Shauna sits in front of him in English class and almost every week now, she turns around to ask for a pencil.

“Sorry,” she whispers, brushing her hair out of her face and giving him an embarrassed smile. “I left mine in my locker.”

Ben smiles back. “No problem,” he says, holding up the two extra mechanical pencils he’s started bringing with him to class every day. “Take your pick.”

She chooses the red one. “Thanks so much,” she says. A couple minutes later she turns back around to pass him the stack of vocabulary quizzes that’s making its way around the classroom and she smiles again. 

He’s always liked brunettes. 

 

*

 

Ten days before Halloween, Leslie calls an emergency meeting of the dance committee after school. Ben assumes this is about the Halloween dance – or, as they have to call it, the Fright Night Masquerade (Sponsored by Sweetums™) – but instead, it’s about something else entirely.

“Okay, so every year, Ann has a Halloween party,” Andy fills him in as they head for the meeting. “But this year, her parents have to go out of town for a conference the weekend of Halloween, and she has this stupid rule about having people when nobody’s home. I totally don’t get it, but whatever, Ann’s mom is crazy.”

“How do you know…?” Ben asks, genuinely curious. He’s never actually seen Ann’s parents, only knows they own a concrete construction company or something. 

Andy shrugs. “Ann and I used to date.”

“No way.” How did he not know this? It’s not like he’s a gossip or anything, but, like – something like that seems so obvious. How did it slip past him?

“It was like, freshman year,” Andy says, all nonchalant like it’s no big deal. “She dumped me. Whatever. April’s totally awesome.” A little cloud crosses his face and he adds, “Ann’s awesome too. But I super like April. You know?”

Ben doesn’t really know – he just _does not understand_ April, no matter how hard he tries – but he gets that Andy does, so he nods. “Yeah, totally.”

“Anyway, the whole thing is, we’re trying to figure out where we can hold the party since we can’t do it at Ann’s,” Andy says as they reach the classroom. “That’s what the meeting is.”

“Ah.” Ben wonders if he could possibly get away with having it at his house, but he decides against it. His parents don’t really mind if he goes to parties, but they always warn him not to bring the party back with him. Besides, he doesn’t really like parties in the first place. He understands why people like them, that’s not it, but they’re just not really his thing. 

It doesn’t really matter, anyway, because they all vote to have the party at Donna’s, which Tom says is “the dopest place in Pawnee” (and if Tom says it, well, it’s got to be pretty extravagant). Ben breathes a sigh of relief.

 

*

 

The Halloween dance is two days away and he doesn’t have a date.

It’s not that he forgot. He’s just been busy. And he’s kind of been hoping that if he waits around long enough, somebody else will ask him. Apparently going to dances with dates is another Thing here in Pawnee. At his old school, people mostly just went with their friends in a big group or on their own, but here, everyone likes to pair up, at least nominally. Even Tom has a date (he’s going with this girl from chem class, Lucy, who he calls his “super-hot Cuban boo”), so Ben thinks he should probably find someone. But it seems like everyone is taken.

Two days before the dance he wakes up, realizing that he should just bite the bullet and ask somebody. _Anybody._ So in fourth period English, when Shauna turns around to ask him for a pencil, he takes them out, but before he hands them over, he asks, “Hey, uh, I know this is really soon, but do you have a date for the Halloween dance?”

She bites her lip. “Um, no,” she says sheepishly. “I was kind of hoping someone would ask me, but nobody has, so… I guess not.”

Emboldened, Ben presses on. “Well, I’m on the dance committee, so I get two free tickets. Do you want to maybe come with me?” She opens her mouth to speak, but he quickly adds, “I mean, it doesn’t have to be, like, a date or anything. Like, if you don’t want that. It’s totally cool. We don’t even have to get dressed. Up. Get dressed up. Costumes aren’t required. Um –” And now he is going to stop talking.

Shauna, for her part, shrugs and smiles. “Sure. Why not? We can go together.” They program their numbers into each other’s phones and promise to work out the details later, and Ben leaves class that day happy, psyched, even, because he’s got a date and he’s not the biggest loser ever, so suck it, Tom.

 

*

 

**THINGS BEN WYATT IS INTO (Oct. 28th)**

 1. Shauna Malwae-Tweep  
 2. Doctor Who  
 3. Radiohead

 

*

 

Sometimes Ben likes to play a game with himself. It’s called “Would You Admit It If You Could Get It?” (Not the best title, but it works.)

The game goes like this. He thinks about things he wants. Then he asks himself if he would admit on national TV that he wants those things if it meant that he could automatically have them. He assumes it’s rooted in being raised Catholic and all that guilt and self-denial, even though the Wyatts aren’t really a religious people and his parents haven’t dragged him to Mass in years, except on Christmas and Easter. But it doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t talk about it to anyone. It’s just something he thinks about to occupy his time.

For example: snacks. He would gladly go on TV and say that he wants a lifetime supply of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. This wouldn’t be embarrassing at all, because everyone knows that Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are obviously the best snack food ever produced. But he’d be slightly less inclined to do the same for a lifetime supply of Sweetums Choc-O-Mint Energy Smoothies, because he’s already told everybody he knows how gross they are, even though he secretly loves them.

Or, for another example: sex. He tries very, very hard not to be the kind of guy who fantasizes about Megan Fox, because, uh, gross. Everybody fantasizes about Megan Fox. He’s pretty sure Megan Fox fantasizes about Megan Fox (like, if she cloned herself and then had sex with her clo– _no,_ stop thinking about that, Ben). But sometimes, when he can’t get off just thinking about, like, the random girl in the porn he’s watching or that lady with the giant boobs from Mad Men, he thinks about Megan Fox. He’s got this really elaborate fantasy that he can just tune into, involving a cruise ship and a swimming pool, and it always works. But would he go on national TV and admit that he wants to have sex with Megan Fox on the lido deck of a Carnival Cruise? Well, no. Because that’s massively embarrassing and it goes against everything he says he stands for, like, as a person. But he has no problem admitting that he likes the girl with the massive boobs from Mad Men, even though he doesn’t even really like her that much. He doesn’t even know her name, really. (Kristin? Christine?) It’s just a socially acceptable thing to say.

Only this time, early morning in the shower, Megan Fox isn’t doing it for him. Another face keeps exploding in front of his eyes every time he closes them and he doesn’t want to do this, so he keeps pushing Leslie away, because, ugh, he’s not allowed to have a crush on her. He tries thinking about Shauna instead, because maybe he just needs to think about somebody he really knows, and she’s so pretty with all that dark, glossy hair and her long, skinny legs, but then he remembers the friction when Leslie was grinding on him at homecoming, and he’s thinking about her lips, imagining them all over his body, on his –

_Stop it, Ben, you said you weren’t going to think about this_

_Stop it_

_Or just admit it_

_Would you admit it if you could get it?_

“No,” he mumbles out loud, forgetting that he’s alone and the voice asking him this is just his stupid fucking conscience that won’t ever leave him alone when he’s just trying to jerk off.

 

*

 

Halloween falls on a Saturday this year and the Halloween Dance is on the Friday before. For the dance he dresses up as the Eleventh Doctor, because it’s easy. He already owns most of the right clothes and he borrows a bow tie from his dad and tries to make his hair go floppy in front. It doesn’t really work, but the effect is close enough.

He and Shauna meet in front of the school, like they agreed, because it’s not a date. He’s already been here for an hour and a half beforehand, setting up with the rest of the dance committee, but he brought his costume with him and puts it on just before he goes out to meet her. She’s dressed like a cat in a short black dress and ears and whiskers drawn on her face. She looks cute. He tells her she looks nice and she smiles and asks what he’s supposed to be. 

“Ahh, I’m the Eleventh Doctor?” he says, almost apologetically, his voice going up at the end like it’s a question. “From Doctor Who? England, you know?”

She shakes her head. “Sorry. But you look really cool!”

“Thanks.” They go back inside and Jerry, who’s on ticket-taking duty, waves them past and into the gym, which actually looks pretty cool. There’s a black light and a strobe light and the DJ (same one from homecoming, because the dude actually is pretty hard-up for gigs) is playing a dubstep remix of the Monster Mash. Ben offers his hand to Shauna and they try to dance for a while before giving up and heading over to the refreshments.

“You gu-u-u-uys!” Tom swoops down on them and throws his arms around both their shoulders. “ _What is up!_ Nice costume, Ben.”

“Thanks,” Ben says warily, waiting for the punchline, but Tom doesn’t seem to have one. “What are you supposed to be?”

“Clearly I’m Kanye West,” says Tom, and Ben shrugs. Clearly. “You guys seen Ann and Leslie? They are looking hot.”

Ben bristles at this because ugh, Tom can’t just _say_ things like that. Not when he himself spends every day coming up with reasons why Leslie isn’t hot. (Because she doesn’t like him, because she didn’t know what “teabagging” meant that one time, because she doesn’t like him, because she has Ann and Ann is her beautiful best friend and if she likes anyone it’s probably Ann, because if Ben had an Ann he would like her a lot more than he would like himself.) But he looks at where they are anyway, and, okay, they do look pretty hot. Leslie is dressed like Lady Gaga and Ann is Beyonce, or something? He can’t really tell but he assumes that’s what they are. They’re not, like, dressed skanky, but Leslie’s dress looks like it’s made out of meat and he wants to know how she did that.

“Oh, is that Leslie Knope?” Shauna asks brightly. “I like her dress! It’s cool.”

Ben feels like a massive fucking tool and he wishes the DJ would play something other than dubstep.

 

*

 

He gets to second base with Shauna that night and then asks her to the Halloween party.

“Sure,” she says, smiling bright and happy at him. She’s happy that he asked. Somehow this makes him feel even worse. “I’d love that.”

She drives herself home since he has to stay after to clean up again, but they kiss in the parking lot before he goes back inside. And, well, isn’t this what he wanted? 

He shrugs to himself and walks back into the gym, where the lights have been brought back up and everyone’s milling about, making sure things go back where they need to be. He sidles up to Tom and mutters under his breath, “Guess who just got to second base with Shauna Malwae-Tweep.”

Tom’s eyes go wide and he gets a big stupid grin on his face. “No way. The Shauna Malwae-Tweep?”

“No, the other Shauna Malwae-Tweep. Of course. How many people do you know with that name?” He rolls his eyes. “Who’s the nerd now?”

Tom shrugs, kind of smugly. “Lucy and I got to third – _in the janitor’s closet._ ” He holds up his hand for a high five but Ben doesn’t return it. This whole night has just been the worst.

 

*

 

The next evening, he picks up Shauna in front of her house. He’s driving his dad’s Honda, which, okay, isn’t the flashiest mode of transportation ever – it’s not Donna’s Mercedes, at least – but it’s a good, solid car. So whatever. Shauna is wearing the same cat costume, which still makes her look awesome, but he’s changed up his outfit a little from the night before.

Well, okay, he’s changed it up a lot. Now he’s dressed as Batman.

“See? Batman and Catwoman!” he says triumphantly, holding out his arms and doing a 360 spin. He’s so glad he pulled all those extra shifts at the movie theater in Indiana last summer. He knew the money would come in handy for something, even if he didn’t necessarily know it would be this. A couple junior high kids walking by, wearing street clothes but already carrying pillowcases stuffed with candy, start yelling “Batman!” and “Fuck you, Batman!” But, okay, fuck them, because he looks awesome. He _knows_ he looks awesome.

Shauna, at least, agrees. “You look awesome,” she grins, and by the time they pull up to Donna’s house, the night almost seems promising.

The party is loud and kind of awful, but the Meagle family home is, indeed, fantastic – huge, set down a private road that doesn’t even have a name, it’s just marked ‘PRIVATE ROAD.’ It's the kind of place that Ben imagines was built for wild teen parties. Which is kind of what is going on inside.

Okay, sort of. There's a lot of beer and a few scattered bottles of vodka and schnapps and the house smells like weed, though he can't really pinpoint where exactly it's coming from, and the stereo is blasting a Ke$ha remix (he hates that he knows that it’s a remix), but just in general, it's not so bad – a few people he knows personally and a bunch of people he only knows of, just kind of sitting around drinking and talking. As soon as they get inside, a cute redhead taps Shauna on the arm and the two start talking intently, and then Shauna’s all, “Ben, I’m gonna go say hi to some people, ‘kay?” 

Ben shrugs and she leaves. He makes his way through the living room in search of a familiar face, but doesn't find one, so instead he finds an open spot on a couch and sits.

“Hey,” he says to the girl beside him, whose name he thinks is Joan. “I'm Ben.”

She looks him up and down and nods curtly. “Hi,” she says, and turns back to her friends. Ben stares at her back for a moment and then gets up and heads for the kitchen.

Where he runs into Leslie.

“Leslie Knope,” he says, in a mocking version of Chris’s usual upbeat fervor, nudging her on the arm and smiling.

She turns to him and grins, holding out her arms for a hug. “Batman!” she yells over the pounding music. “I'm so glad you made it, oh my god!”

He accepts the hug and probably reciprocates for a second too long, but she doesn't seem to notice or care. “Yeah, it took me a while to find this place, but I'm here now!”

“Good!" She grins. "Are you having a good time?”

“It's okay, I mean, I just got here – ”

“Okay, great, let me get you a beer – wait, you’re not driving, are you? We need to get you back to Gotham in one piece.”

“Nope,” he lies. As Leslie reaches into the fridge, Ben gives her a good look up and down. She’s also changed her costume from the night before; now she’s a surprisingly convincing zombie. She still looks tiny and gorgeous and he swallows a little.

“Thanks,” he says as she presses a beer into his hand.

“No problem!” She grins and shifts her weight from leg to leg a couple times. “So, now are you having a good time?”

“You know, I gotta say, it's getting better.”

“Your 'fun' rate has just like, skyrocketed in the past two minutes, right?”

“Totally,” Ben grins. “Thanks for your help.”

There's a crash in the living room and they both whip their heads around to gawk. It kind of looks like Andy has been bro-ing around with a couple guys from the football team, tossing a vase back and forth. It hit a wall and shattered, and it looks as if there’s gonna be hell to pay. 

“Dude!” Donna yells, bustling over and shooing everyone away from the scene of the crime. “You cannot fucking do that. You understand?”

As the two of them start sweeping up the shards, Ben turns to Leslie. “Can you promise not to ever break anything in Donna’s house? Like, ever? Because that definitely was like, a dangerous situation, for all of us. I thought she was gonna set him on fire or something.”

Leslie rolls her eyes. “Don’t even worry,” she says. “This whole night has just been one thing like that after another. Right before you got here, Jean-Ralphio’s date – her name’s Trixie or something, you know, that cheerleader? God knows where he found her. But anyway, she decided to start dancing on the ping-pong table because Jean-Ralphio was freestyling over a mix of ‘Turn My Swag On,’ and then the table broke and nobody wanted to help her up. Ann knows first aid, so she finally got her up and took her to the bathroom and I haven’t seen her since. I don’t think Donna is gonna let us ever have another party here.”

“Sounds like a rough night,” Ben says. “My date abandoned me literally the minute we got here. A bunch of girls just like, swooped down on her and carted her off. Why do girls do that?”

“Secret lady stuff,” shrugs Leslie. “You wanna go sit outside?”

“Sure.”

 

*

 

On the deck outside they can hear the party still, and there are other people out there, but it's not nearly as loud and they can see the stars and it's actually pretty gorgeous. Ben thinks that under other circumstances, it could almost be termed romantic, but considering that he and the girl of his dreams ( _no, not at all the girl of his dreams, that’s Shauna, remember? Stop it stop it stop it_ ) are, instead of tenderly making out and rubbing their privates together underneath said stars, they're sitting in wooden deck chairs telling each other bad jokes, it doesn't really count.

“Wait, wait, I've got one,” cackles Leslie. “So a guy walks into a bar and he sees a lion – no, wait, sorry. A guy walks into a bar and he sees a giraffe lying on the ground. And he says to the bartender, ‘Are you just gonna leave that lying there?’ And the bartender says, ‘That's not a lion, that's a giraffe!’”

Ben covers his mouth as he laughs, hard. Way harder than he should, considering that she tipped the punchline right off the bat and it wasn't even that good a joke to begin with. But fuck it, he's kind of tipsy, and the way she delivered the punchline, like it was the funniest thing to have ever come out of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s mouths, combined, was actually hilarious.

“Okay, wait, here's one,” Ben laughs. “Okay, so where did Napoleon keep his armies?”

“I dunno, where?” Leslie says. 

“ _IN HIS SLEEVIES!_ ” he shouts, raising his arms above his head and flailing them around around. Leslie throws her head back with laughter, pure and uninhibited, he assumes for the same reason he laughed at hers. It's not that what they're saying is that funny. It's honestly just the atmosphere – the way everything she says, he can counter with something equally stupid, and because it's so late at night now, it works.

“You know, I'm really glad you came tonight,” says Leslie, suddenly serious. “Like, I was actually seriously worried that you weren't gonna show up.”

“What would make you think that?” Ben asks.

She shrugs. “You're just, like, super serious most of the time. I mean, not recently. I like that. I really think that the better I get to know you, the more I like you. But a part of me was still like, ‘Oh, man, what if he doesn't show?’”

“Well, I'm here now,” Ben says, smiling at her. It feels oddly sincere. He likes this.

“Yeah,” she says. She leans forward in her chair, and Ben does the same.

“I guess I can say that I only really came because you wanted me to,” Ben says. 

She cocks her head. “Really?”

“Yeah. I guess I just thought – you know, it'd be fun if you were here. And it is. I mean, you do that. You just -- make things fun.” He pauses. “I guess that doesn't really make sense.”

But she’s smiling. “That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me,” she says.

Ben pauses again, then smiles back. “Well, it’s true,” he says. She’s still smiling. She looks gorgeous even through her zombie makeup. This is unfair. This is so fucking unfair.

They sit like that for a moment, and then they hear the sliding glass door open behind them. “Leslie, you out here?” 

It’s Ann.

Leslie jumps up quickly, and Ben follows suit. “Yes! Right here!” Ann rushes over and heaves a great sigh, prompting Leslie to ask, “What’s going on?”

“Ugh,” Ann says, disgusted. “This night is the worst. Lucy broke up with Tom and he tried to feel me up over the punch bowl, and then I might have made out with Chris Traeger, and then somebody said that Mark Brendanawicz was looking for me because he still likes me or something? Guys are the _worst_ , Leslie.” She catches Ben’s eye. “Hey, Ben. I hope you didn’t come with Shauna or anything, because I think she just left with a guy from the baseball team. She told me to tell you goodbye.”

Ben sighs. “Thanks, Ann,” he says tiredly.

Ann nods. “Sorry. Was I interrupting or anything?”

“No!” Leslie answers far too quickly. She cocks her head as the music pounding from inside the house changes, and then adds, “Ann! They’re playing our song! Let’s go!” 

“Do we have to?” Ann asks. “I kind of just want to sit out here for a while.”

“No, you need to dance it out,” Leslie says. “It’s ‘Telephone’! Your favorite Gaga song! So empowering! Let’s go! SeeyoulaterBen.” She all but forcibly drags Ann back inside, and Ben heaves a sigh.

Then the door opens again, that girl Joan stumbles out onto the deck, and with an unladylike retch, empties the contents of her stomach into the chair Ben has just vacated.

 

*

 

(An hour later.)

It's gotten colder outside, so cold for October that Ben knows he should really go inside, but for fuck's sake, Leslie might still be inside, and he really does not want to have to go in and talk to her right now, not after that hasty exit. She couldn't get away from him fast enough. Right now, cold or not, he's perfectly content to sit outside, staring blankly at the water of Donna’s backyard swimming pool with the stupid, unromantic stars reflected in it and really, truly evaluate his life.

He's perfectly content to think about this alone, by himself, out on the deck. But the door suddenly opens and shuts behind him and he turns around, and it's actually the second-to-last person he wants to see right now.

Ann catches his eye and sighs. There's a deeply irritated, world-weary look to her and Ben decides not to push it.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

She heaves another sigh, and walks toward him, uninvited. “I was looking for my coat and I just walked in on April and Andy having sex.”

Ben pulls a face and shakes his head. “I'm sorry. It just hasn’t been your night.”

“Yeah.” Ann rolls her eyes. “I mean, I kind of assumed, they’ve been together for a while, but like – there are some visuals you can do without, and your ex-boyfriend doing it with a girl who hates you is one of them you know?”

Ben looks up at her. “You wanna sit?”

She glances around, exhales, and shrugs. “Oh, why not. Sure.” She drops into the chair and leans back, notices the cooler beside Ben. “Can you get me a beer?”

He raises his eyebrows at her. “Do you have a designated driver? Leslie would want me to ask.”

Ann laughs. “Oh, for God's sake, you are so – yeah, yeah. No, I don't, but are you sober?”

“More or less, at this point.”

“Can you drive me home? Specifically, can I trust you to drive me home without trying to get into my pants?”

Ben fixes her with a steely stare. “Honestly, Ann? After the night I've had, I'm pretty sure that I never want to think about getting into anyone's pants, ever again.”

“What happened?”

“It's a really long story.”

“Aha.” Ann shrugs and pops open the can, taking a long swig. “By the way, does it kind of smell like somebody puked somewhere close?”

Ben raises his eyebrows. “Yeah. That was kind of part of it.”

She laughs a little, shakes her head. “You know, I kind of feel like there's something you're not telling me here.”

“Ann, can I just be honest?” Ben asks. “I kind of feel like things are weird between you and me for some reason, and I don’t know why, but it’s uncomfortable. I think we should try to be friends. I mean, we’re both friends with Leslie, so there’s that. And it’s not like you’ve been mean to me, because you’re a lot nicer than a lot of people, but it’s just weird, and I don’t want it to be weird. So I think we should at least try to get along.” He swallows, and then finishes, “So. Uh. Truce?”

Ann says nothing for a moment, and then, slowly, nods, a smile hidden on her face. “Truce,” she says, extending her hand. They shake on it, and for a moment, there's nothing but silence and the noise of the party inside.

 

*

 

**THINGS BEN WYATT IS INTO (Oct. 31)**

 1. Tim Burton’s Batman  
 2. The Beastie Boys  
 3. Platonic friendships


	3. Thanks

It’s midway through November and it’s starting to get cold, really cold, every morning. He has to layer his shirts and sometimes wear a jacket, because he tends to get cold really fast – Andy is the type of dude who walks around in a t-shirt in freezing weather, just like, to prove that he can or something, which Ben is starting to find kind of annoying. But he’s been hanging out with Andy a lot lately anyway. Ben and Andy and, by default, April have become a trio, which is weird because he’s still pretty sure that April hates him. But it’s better than being a loner, so he’s just going to deal with it and try not to let things get weird.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, he’s hanging out with Andy a lot, and when April’s not around they actually have a lot of fun. They drive home together after school when April has detention – Andy failed his permit test twice and his parents finally decided that he probably shouldn’t get his license until he turns 18, which Ben privately thinks is probably a pretty good idea – and more often than not, Ben ends up hanging around Andy’s house for a while. This eventually has turned into them going over to Andy’s house every Friday to demolish the Dwyer family’s leftovers for the week, then play Mass Effect or Skyrim until Ben figures it’s time to go home. 

Today he’s sitting in Andy’s kitchen while Andy rummages around in the fridge. Andy’s talking about football, something about the Colts and some person named Chuck Pagano, when all of a sudden he switches gears suddenly and says in what he probably thinks is a casual voice, “Oh, shoot. Ben, dude, I totally forgot to ask. Do you like anybody?”

Ben almost chokes on the Coke he’s drinking. He puts the can down and wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “What?” he asks nervously. “Why?”

Andy shrugs. “You’ve been here, like, six months. Everybody wants to know.”

“I’ve been here three months.” Ben doesn’t like where this is going. “And who’s ‘everybody’?”

“You know, _everybody_.” Andy shrugs again. “Dude, you don’t have to answer. But April bet me five bucks that you’re gay and she wants to set you up with her gay friend Ben because she thinks it’d be funny to call you Ben-Squared. So I thought I’d ask.”

Ben snorts. Typical April. “Well, for whatever it’s worth, you can tell her that I’m not gay,” he says. “And even if I did like somebody, it’s not like I’d tell April.”

Andy grins. “It’s totally obvious, anyway,” he says. “I mean, come on. It’s not like we all haven’t thought about it once or twice.”

“Thought about what, exactly?” (Okay, sure, everyone might have gay thoughts – at least according to the pamphlets in the counselor’s office – but this is so not a conversational road he wants to go down with his closest dude friend.)

“You know. Leslie.”

This time Ben does, in fact, choke on the soda in his mouth. One coughing fit later – after Andy pounds on his back _way_ harder than necessary – he sits up straight, wipes his runny nose, and shakes his head. “I do _not_ ,” he says in a strained voice, “think about Leslie. Under any circumstances. Except, you know. Totally platonic friendship ones. We are friends. That is it.”

“Whatever, man,” Andy says. ( _Why is he being smug? Anyone who has set a microwave on fire by trying to heat up soup that’s still in the can should not allowed to be smug, under any circumstances, ever._ ) “I’m just saying, I can’t blame you. She’s awesome.”

Ben rolls his eyes. “Thank you for your insight,” he says pointedly. “You’re completely wrong, but thank you very much nonetheless."

 

*

 

When he gets home his parents are screaming at each other. They didn’t fight like this in Indianapolis. Somehow, since the move, they’ve lost the cold, distant civility that colored their old disagreements, as if they left it behind in the old house. His mom is yelling that she wants a divorce and his father retaliates by shouting, “Call a lawyer!” over and over again, and Ben quietly closes his bedroom door and puts on his headphones and turns the volume on his iPod all the way up.

He doesn’t hear the ‘ding’ that signifies a text, but he sees his phone screen light up from across the room and he pulls himself up off his bed to grab it. He’s about to toss it back down on his desk when he notices the text is from Leslie:

__

_Leslie Knope:  
Whats up??? I can sense your sadness all the way across town :(_

He laughs to himself and types out a quick reply:

__

_Ben:  
Not much. Parents are fighting. Howd you know?_

The response comes almost immediately:

__

_Leslie Knope:  
Sixth sense. Plus youre not on facebook chat and your last status was kinda depressing :/_

He cringes when he remembers the status he posted just a few minutes before: “I love being used as a pawn in other people's games!!! NOT. This house fucking sucks.” He sighs and replies quickly.

__

_Ben:  
Sorry about that. It’s been a rough day_

  


____

_Leslie Knope:  
Yeah? Are you okay? Do you wanna talk??_  


  


_Ben:  
Idk. Not over texts_  


He’s barely hit 'send' on the last message when his phone’s ringing with Leslie’s face lighting up the screen. He sighs again, then turns off his music, removes his headphones, and answers.

“What’s up?” Her voice sounds concerned, not nearly as sunny as is usual for her. Ben bites his lip before answering.

“Your parents are divorced, right?” he asks.

“Well, my dad is dead, but yeah, they got divorced before he died,” she says. “When I was like seven. Honestly, it was for the better. All they ever did was fight with each other.”

“Yeah, well. I think mine are headed down that same path. They used to tolerate each other. Like, there’s never been a lot of love between them, but they just kept everything bottled up and it was fine.”

“So what changed?” Leslie asks.

Ben mulls over the question. “We moved here,” he says thoughtfully. “And my dad started making a lot more money. I don’t really know, though. They don’t really talk about anything with me. I feel like they don’t really care what I do as long as I get good grades and don’t embarrass them.”

“Oh,” says Leslie. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be,” he says. “I mean, that’s not really the problem. I love them, it’s just… they’re making things really uncomfortable right now. It’s always, like, ‘Ben, tell your father this’ or ‘Ben, tell your mother that,’ and they’re always blaming stupid shit on each other. Like when I got home today, my mom was screaming because she’s tired of doing my dad’s laundry and then she was like, ‘Ben does all his own laundry, but you can’t even keep up with a fucking sixteen-year-old,’ and it’s like, I really do not want to be involved in this, you know? But they always drag me into it, and I hate it.”

Leslie’s quiet for a while, and he’s briefly worried that he’s said the wrong thing, but when he says her name, she hurriedly adds, “I’m here! I’m still here. I’m just… I’m sorry. That really sucks.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry for dumping all this on you.”

“Ugh, don’t apologize, Ben,” she says. “I asked. I’m just trying to figure out a way to make it better.”

“Well, you don’t have to do that,” he says. “It’s not your fault –”

“I know,” she says. “But I want to.” She’s quiet for another minute, and then she asks, “Oh, I’ve got it. Do you want to come over tomorrow?”

Tomorrow is Saturday and he doesn’t have anything going on. “Sure,” he says. “Why?”

“Oh, I just thought we could hang out,” she says. “So you don’t have to be in your house. How’s, like, three?”

“Three is perfect,” he says. “I mean, look, you really don’t have to do that –”

“Oh, shush, Ben,” she says strictly. “I’ll text you my address. Just come, okay?”

Ben laughs in spite of himself. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll come. I’ll be there with bells on.”

“Good,” she says happily. “Are you okay now? Or do you want me to stay on the line?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “I mean, Leslie, I’m not despondent or anything, you don’t have to worry about me –”

“Okay, fine.” Leslie pauses, and then clears her throat. “I actually have a lot of homework, so I might need to go at some point…”

“Go right ahead,” he says. “Thanks, Leslie.”

He can hear the smile in her voice over the line. “Seriously, any time.”

A few minutes after they hang up he receives the text with her address in it. He cranks his headphones back up as the arguing downstairs reaches another crescendo.

 

*

 

Leslie’s house is a modest but nice little place, on a modest but nice little street. He knocks on the door and she answers, inviting him in. The whole place is cluttered, ten pounds of stuff in a five-pound sack, but that’s not really a problem because he gets nervous in bare, Spartan rooms. 

Her mom is gone all day at some kind of school board event for the Wamapoke Unified School District. When Leslie mentions this, Ben feels a little awkward. Actually, he feels more than a little awkward, because he was really counting on there to be a buffer. He doesn’t want to be alone with Leslie, because being alone means that he runs the risk of letting his guard down. 

Leslie offers him hot chocolate, and it’s freezing outside, so he accepts. She tosses him a can of Reddi-Whip and slides a bottle of chocolate syrup across the table. “Go nuts on the toppings,” she says. “Seriously. Hot chocolate is one of the five best beverages in the universe. Maybe the absolute best. Don’t be a stick in the mud. Indulge yourself!” So he does, and even though it’s cloyingly sweet, it’s not really that bad. She produces a package of gingerbread cookies that aren’t Sweetums brand, and they sit in her kitchen, chattering idly, the way people do when the curiosity is mutual and borders on something more. Something like – attraction, almost.

_(No, stop that, you are not attracted to her.)_

“I like your house,” Ben says between sips. “It’s comfortable. Really. We’ve been here almost four months and we’re still living out of boxes at my place.”

“It’s kind of a mess,” Leslie says doubtfully. “But whatever. A year and a half ‘til I’m out of here, anyway.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says breezily. “Probably Bloomington. I want to stay in-state.”

“Really?” Ben says. “You’ve got a lot of – I don’t know, potential. Why not try for a private school?”

“I like Indiana,” she says simply. “I want to be a senator here. Maybe governor. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to go out of state if I mostly want to spend my life here. Anyway, what about you? Where do you want to go?”

Ben bites his lip. “I don’t really know,” he says with a shrug. “My dad went to Northwestern. My grades are pretty good, so I figure I might have a shot at getting in there. I’ll probably apply a lot of places, though. Anywhere that’ll take me. U Chicago, places in Boston, wherever. Maybe Georgetown, but that's a long shot.”

“So you want out, huh?”

“You noticed.” He tries to temper his laugh, make it sound innocent and light, but he’s afraid that a tinge of bitterness seeps through nonetheless. There’s no way Leslie could ever understand how badly he wants out. It’s not that Indiana isn’t okay. It’s perfectly okay. ‘Okay’ is all it is; it’s the perfect word for it. 

Ben wants more than ‘okay’. 

“Well, what do you want to do?” Leslie asks. She’s got some whipped cream on her upper lip and Ben is met with the irresistible urge to lick it off ( _no_ ), but before he can point it out, she wipes it off with a napkin. He stops staring at her lips, which he realizes he’s been doing for more than a few moments now, and refocuses.

“I, uh.” He stammers a little in spite of himself. “I’ll probably just become an actuary or a CPA. The money is really good, and, you know, I’m good at math. I like numbers.”

“That’s not what I asked, though,” Leslie says with a knowing smile. “What is it that you _want_ to do? What would you choose if you could choose anything?”

Ben bites the inside of his cheek as he looks down into his half-empty cup of hot chocolate. The mug is chipped white ceramic and has a dishwasher-faded insignia for the Pawnee Community Center on one side, and he rubs his thumb over the word _community_ as he thinks. “I don’t know,” he confesses truthfully. “I guess – well, I mean, I know it’s stupid, but I guess I’d go into politics, too. Not as a politician, but maybe as a speechwriter or a campaign manager. Something behind the scenes. I really like that stuff. I don’t know. Politics, in general – I’m a big geek for it. I just like knowing what’s going on in the White House. It’s cool.”

He doesn’t know what he’s said, but Leslie’s got a grin on her face the size of the moon, and suddenly she’s grabbing his hand and pulling him up out of his seat at the kitchen table. “Come on,” she says, and he follows her as she runs down the hall and opens a door, and – oh. Shit.

This is her bedroom.

It’s small and just as cluttered and kind of odd, like looking into all sixteen years of her life at once. It's still painted little-girl pink with white curtains, but the bedspread is blue and so are the pillows. There's a big _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II_ poster hanging on her closet door, and a bunch of framed photos on the bookcase (Ben tries not took look at them too hard, but definitely notices a prom photo with her and some handsome, alluringly-eyebrowed dude posing on a staircase; the rest of them all seem to feature Ann in some regard). But most important are the framed photos that line the shelf above her desk.

“I’ve got the whole Obama cabinet!” she says triumphantly. “They’re there to motivate me. Like, when I don’t want to get my homework done, I imagine Hillary giving me a pep talk and I’m totally refreshed.” She laughs. “Totally geeky, but, like, whatever works, right?”

Ben shakes his head as he smiles at her. “Honestly, Leslie, you’re like the best person in this entire town.”

She flops down on her bed and she pats the spot next to her. “You can sit, if you want,” she says. 

His stomach twists and he wants, shit, he wants it so badly, but he knows that if he sits, he can’t be responsible for what happens after that. He can’t just sit on Leslie Knope’s bed and not think about kissing her, not think about her hands in his hair and his hands under her shirt, pulling it up and letting her unbutton his jeans and – ( _Stop._ ) He shakes his head quickly. A little too quickly. “I, uh, I’m not done with my hot chocolate,” he says, thinking as fast as he can, “and it’s not as good when it gets cold, you know, they don’t sell cold chocolate – or, you know, maybe they do, it’s called chocolate milk, but they don’t put whipped cream on it, because that’s weird, and do you want to go back to the kitchen? Not that your room isn’t really nice but I don’t want ants to get into the food – I’m not saying that you have ants or anything. Shit, I mean, it’s almost December, they’re probably all dead from the cold by now, but I’m just saying, better safe than sexy, you know? Sorry! Better safe than – sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

He is such a fucking human disaster.

 

*

 

There are three days left before Thanksgiving break when he gets back to school that Monday. He slides into his seat in homeroom that morning and when the warm air hits his face, the rush of returning sensation feels like needles all over his nose. It’s particularly cold out and he’s still shivering a little from his walk from the parking lot to the building. Leslie and Ann are involved in what seems like a deep conversation when he gets there, and he doesn’t want to make eye contact because he’s sure they’ve already talked about that weekend, what he said, how it was awkward for a whole other hour before he went home, and – 

“Oh, good, Ben’s here,” Leslie says. “We need to ask your opinion on something.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Ask away,” he says, a little nervous, because this could mean anything.

“Okay,” Ann says, “we’re trying to figure out whether Mr. Swanson is banging the librarian again.”

Ben snorts out a laugh despite himself. “Mr. Swanson? Seriously? Isn’t he, like – totally not that kind of dude? And isn’t he married, anyway?”

“Nope.” Leslie shakes her head vigorously. “But he used to be married. _To that same librarian_.”

“Are we talking about the same one?” Ben asks, thinking of the women he’s seen in the school library the five or six times he’s been in there. “The eighty-year-old lady who thinks everybody’s her long-lost niece or nephew?”

Leslie and Ann exchange an incredulous look. “No,” Leslie says. “We’re talking about Mrs. Swanson. The evil bitch with the dark hair. She has glasses, you know?”

“She once tried to make Wuthering Heights required reading because she says every girl needs to learn to be more like Cathy,” Ann says with raised eyebrows. “And she and Mr. Swanson used to be married.”

“Used to be? Then why would they be banging again?” Ben is seriously confused.

“You don’t get it, Ben,” Leslie says, shaking her head. “She’s evil. He probably has something she wants or – oh, God, I don’t know, but it’s super interesting.”

Ben gives them what he’s pretty sure is a judgmental look. “Well, have fun gossiping about the sex lives of the school faculty,” he says as he turns around. “I’m sure that’s super fun.”

“God, what crawled up his butt?” Ann whispers loudly enough for him to hear. Leslie’s response isn’t audible and for that, he’s thankful.

 

*

 

Ben and his parents go to Indianapolis for Thanksgiving and have dinner at his aunt and uncle’s house. The drive there is long and silent and he sits in the backseat uncomfortably, slumped against the window, listening to Black Flag on his iPod and fiddling with the skinny tie his parents made him wear.

His aunt’s house is still way too big and far too clean. It looks eerie, like something out of The Stepford Wives. Gravel crunches underneath the car tires as they pull into the driveway and there’s a turkey flag hanging from a pole by the door, and Aunt Helen is totally the type of woman who has flags like this for every holiday. There’s probably a Santa flag for Christmas, or maybe a dreidel flag for Hanukkah – he has to remind himself that this is the Jewish side of his family, they see each other so rarely that he tends to forget – and a heart for Valentine’s Day and a leprechaun for St. Patrick’s Day and a pumpkin for Halloween, or maybe a ghost.

It’s kind of stupid.

Aunt Helen and Uncle Mike invite them in and their little white dogs are yipping at their feet. They’re labradoodles or shit-poos or some kind of superfluous poodle mix. All Ben knows is that they make far too much noise for such small animals, and this is why he’s always been a cat person. His cousins are sitting in the living room, Rob and Josh and Annie, watching the Westminster Dog Show and looking deeply bored.

“Hey,” he says awkwardly as he stands in the doorway. They all shoot him a look, say a dismissive hello, and focus their attention back on the TV. He sighs and sits down in the one chair left empty, pulls out his phone, and shoots off a quick text to Tom:

__

_Ben:  
How’s your t-day going?_

Tom answers a few minutes later.

__

_Tom Haverford  
If by t-day u mean tommy-day, it is goin BANGINLY. Hbu??? Whats ur fam-bam up 2? Nerd stuff i assume hahahahaha_

Ben knits his brow as he works his way through the text a couple times. Once he’s relatively sure that he’s comprehended it all correctly, he replies:

__

_Ben:  
We’re in Indianapolis for the day. Seeing some family._

Tom’s response is made up entirely of emojiis and Ben sighs and starts flicking through some of his other texts. He shoots off an obligatory “Happy Thanksgiving!” group message to all of his friends. Chris replies immediately with a message full of smiley faces and exclamation points. Leslie’s response is about fifteen minutes coming, but when he sees it, he can’t stop rereading it, unsure of its meaning.

__

_Leslie Knope:  
Same to you! What are you thankful for this year? I know what my answer is! :)_

He mulls it over for a few minutes, and then finally types out a tentative response:

__

  
_Ben:  
I’m thankful for Pawnee. I think I might have judged it a little too harshly at first. It’s a really nice town. And the people aren’t so bad either._   


He hesitates before adding a smiley face to the end, and then hits ‘send.’ She doesn’t respond to that at all. His stomach twists ( _was the smiley too obvious? Oh god_ ) and he shoves his phone back in his pocket and stares at the TV, where a woman in a black suit is jogging in a circle with an Old English sheepdog.

 

*

 

The meal is served not too long afterward. He takes a plateful of turkey and potatoes and a little bit of green bean casserole, on Aunt Helen’s pointed, demanding look, and then eats mostly in silence as his mother refills her wine glass. His dad and Uncle Mike keep up a booming conversation about the Colts and his cousin Annie fills up the silences in-between with a peppy monologue about school and anything else that seems to come to mind. It’s getting a little bit irritating after about twenty minutes, but Ben bites his tongue.

“You know,” she chirps as yet another silence falls over the table, “I heard that Nights in Rodanthe is a wonderful movie.”

Ben rolls his eyes. “Nobody has ever said that, Annie,” he snaps before he can think twice.

Something about this statement makes his father lose his shit completely. Slamming his fork down, he yells, “God-fucking-damnit, Benjamin, you are so rude to your cousins!”

“I was just being sensible!” he protests. “No one has ever said that!”

“ _Jesus Christ!_ ” his father screams at the top of his lungs. “We are trying to have a civilized family dinner and enjoy our time together and of course, no one’s fucking capable of that! Fuck it!” 

“Really, Dad?” Ben yells, getting riled up now in spite of himself and standing up, throwing his napkin on his chair. “Why are you such an asshole? Seriously! Answer that! Because all you’ve done all day is make weird passive-aggressive remarks and yell about football! Maybe if you want us to be civilized, you can try being _nice_ for once!”

“SIT THE FUCK DOWN,” his father roars. “I mean it, Benjamin. Sit the fuck down right now or you are going to regret the day you were fucking born.”

With an icy glare at his father, Ben sits. At the same time, his mother drains her glass of wine, stands, and leaves the room.

They finish the meal in stony silence. When his plate is clean, Ben asks to be excused.

“Go right ahead,” his father snorts derisively. “No fucking pie for you.”

Like he wanted pie in the first place.

He slams the front door behind him and sits on the front porch swing. It’s way too cold to be out here without a jacket, but he’s not going back inside after that dramatic exit. He crosses his arms and draws his legs up against him and stares at the houses around the cul-de-sac and across the street. He’s not sure how many minutes have passed until his father slams through the door, wearing his jacket and jingling his keys from his hand.

“Your mother’s disappeared,” he grumbles at Ben. “I’m going out to look for her.”

“Good,” Ben mutters under his breath. Then, raising his voice, he asks, “Should I come?”

“I don’t want to see your face,” his father says dismissively as he stomps down the porch steps and across the driveway. He closes the car door far too hard and starts the ignition, and peels out of the driveway at an alarming speed.

Ben’s phone dings in his pocket and he looks at the screen. Another text from Leslie. He reads it quickly:

__

  
_Leslie Knope:  
Pawnee is nice. I agree. :)_   


He doesn’t have much to say to this, so he doesn’t respond. In any case, it’s getting too fucking cold to stay out here. He slips back into the house, but there are people everywhere he goes, glaring at him like he’s just murdered their stupid white dogs, so he makes his way to the garage, where, upon closing the door behind him, he turns to find his mother sitting on a bench, smoking and staring at the wall. 

“Oh.” She looks pretty pissed. “Sorry. I’ll come back later.”

His mom rolls her eyes. “No, by all means, stay.” Her voice is sarcastic but he’s annoyed enough with everyone else to take her seriously, just to spite her. 

“Dad’s out looking for you.”

“Did he take the car?”

“Yeah.”

“Great.” She takes another drag on her cigarette, then blows the smoke into the air. 

She still looks angry, but Ben hates it when people are mad at him, so he forces out an apology. “I’m sorry, you know,” he says. “I didn’t think. It was just, you know… Nights in Rodanthe is _not_ a good movie.”

This time she laughs a little, in spite of herself, and pats the bench beside her. He takes a seat, and she sighs. “Your father and I are getting a divorce,” she says suddenly.

And, well, there it is.

“Oh,” Ben says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “Okay.”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“Should I be?”

She laughs again. “Not really, no.” Another drag, and she exhales before saying, “We were going to wait until you went off to college, but – you know how these things are.”

“I don’t, really, but I get what you’re saying.” He still has no idea what to say. “Congratulations? Or is that not the right word?”

“I expected you to be angrier.”

“If it gets you two to stop arguing all the time, I’ll take it,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t know. I was talking to a friend about this stuff and she said that when her parents got divorced, it made everything ten times easier. According to her, it’s not worth it to pretend to be normal when it’s just obviously not anywhere near normal anymore.”

“Sounds like a smart girl,” his mom observes.

“Yeah,” Ben agrees. “She’s pretty smart.”

They sit in silence for another few minutes, Ben starting feel a little sick from the smell of Marlboro Light but not really caring. Divorce. He’s going to be one of those divorced kids. He’s too old for the two-Christmases, two-birthdays routine that all his childhood friends with divorced parents got. He doesn’t like the idea of his parents dating other people. It makes him feel squirmy, uncomfortable, like he wants to crawl into the space between the washing machine and the dryer on the other side of the garage and never come out. “When are you doing it?” he asks suddenly. “Getting divorced, I mean.”

His mom shrugs. “We’re not sure yet. We don’t want to start the proceedings until after Christmas. Your father wants to be moved out by Valentine’s Day.”

“By my birthday, then,” he says. His birthday is February 13th. 

“More or less.”

Ben sighs. “Mom?” he asks.

“What?”

“Are we going to move back to Indianapolis?”

She heaves a sigh of her own. “I don’t know. I honestly haven’t thought that far ahead. Why? Do you want to?”

He’s about to answer in the affirmative, but as he opens his mouth, he stops and thinks. He thinks about Pawnee and the Sweetums energy bars that he pretends to hate but actually kind of likes, and how the football team stole the Eagleton mascot Bucky the Eagle and hung the head from the PHS flagpole, and about Lil’ Sebastian at homecoming and the waffles at JJ’s Diner which, yeah, were really good; and he thinks about driving around with everyone in Donna’s Benz with Tom’s ridiculous but catchy choice of music blasting and playing video games with Andy every Friday and Chris’s elaborate high fives and how Ann makes really good smoothies when everybody goes over to her house. He thinks about how he kind of does want to find out whether Mr. Swanson is banging the librarian, and how he loves sitting in homeroom with Leslie and Ann, making fun of Joan Callamezzo’s morning announcements, and he thinks about Leslie’s hair and her smile and the framed picture of Joe Biden on the shelf above her desk and he knows the answer.

“Not really,” he says honestly.

His mom gives him an odd look. “Okay, then,” she says.

 

**THINGS BEN WYATT IS INTO (Nov. 26)**  
 1. Pawnee  
 2. Leslie Knope?  
 3. Leslie Knope.


	4. Christmastime is Here

It’s like, Ben doesn’t like to presume.

But now that he’s decided that he has a – okay, a thing – for Leslie, he really wants to know what’s going on with her and Ann. 

He debates over asking Andy, but he realizes that absolutely nothing good can come of that. Even if Andy knows something he doesn’t – which doesn’t seem likely, since the other day, Andy asked him whether peanut butter was a vegetable – he also has a gigantic mouth. It’s not that he’s malicious about it, but Ben is pretty sure that if he asked in the most innocent way whether Leslie and Ann were more than friends, it would be headline news within their group by the next day simply because Andy has no filter whatsoever.

By that token, he’s not sure what possesses him to do what he does next. But on a Thursday afternoon in early December, two weeks to the day after his Thanksgiving revelation, he leans over to Joan Callamezzo in chem class and asks quietly, “What do you know about Ann Perkins?”

Joan looks him up and down like a hyena checking out a gimpy gazelle. “What do you wanna know?” she asks with a smug smile. Joan knows everything about everyone. She’s like the Perez Hilton of Pawnee High. He can’t stand her morning announcements or the way she’s wearing twenty pounds of makeup at two in the afternoon on a Thursday, but, well, if anyone would have dirt on Ann and Leslie, it would be her. 

Ben shrugs. “What’s the deal with her and Leslie Knope? Like, what are they, girlfriends or something?” He tries not to sound too nasty about it, because, uh, Ben is totally not a homophobe. Ben once got a handjob from another guy at an out-of-town debate team meet ( _everyone has gay thoughts_ ), so he is more than okay with lesbians. It’s just that, you know, he does kind of want to know what the deal is with those two girls.

So Joan rolls her eyes. “Total lesbians,” she says. “And it’s funny, ‘cause Ann Perkins used to be a total skank. She’s dated, like, every guy at this school. She’s the female Mark Brendanawicz – they dated, too, by the way. And then all of a sudden she stopped dating around totally, and she and Leslie are all BFFs now, and it’s like, totally obvious that they’re in love.”

“Huh.” Ben frowns. “But do you have, like, proof? Or is it just a rumor?”

“Just trust me.” Joan gives him her hyena smile. 

 

*

 

It’s December 16th. They have exactly one week left of school, which means it’s time for the annual Candy Cane Sale (Sponsored by Sweetums™), which means the events committee has to run it because, well, it’s their job. They get a lot of their budget for spring events from this sale, according to Leslie, because apparently people at Pawnee High are fucking nuts for candy canes.

They’re also fucking nuts for secret admirer messages. Ben finds this out quickly when he asks why there’s such a long line at his card table. “It’s because people are obsessed with love letters,” April says. “It’s a stupid tradition. You send a candy cane and you put a secret admirer note on it. Whatever.”

Great. Love letters. Perfect. But he finds that he actually kind of enjoys selling them, because it means he gets to read other peoples’ love notes. He finds out that at least twenty girls have crushes on Bobby Newport, who’s far and away winning this love letter thing. Shauna Malwae-Tweep sends one to Chris Traeger and doesn’t make eye contact with Ben when she gives him her $1.50, and that weird kid Orin sends one to April (it’s written in red ink and made to look like blood, and he’s signed it in calligraphy). Jean-Ralphio plunks down a twenty and sends thirteen candy canes to thirteen different girls, where the only thing different on each note is their name, and then buys one more and sends it anonymously to – Ben chokes on his saliva as he reads it – Tom. Donna gets a bunch and Brandi Maxwell gets a metric fuckton, almost more than Bobby Newport, and even Carl Lorthner gets a couple, but what’s really getting Ben down is that even though he’s reading each card he’s handed, none of them are addressed to him.

( _Merry fucking Christmas to you, too._ )

 

*

 

On the last day before the sale finishes, near the very end of the day, Ben quietly slips six quarters into the cash box and picks up a single candy cane. He writes out a message quickly, not allowing time to second-guess his words.

He tosses it into the box and doesn’t look back.

 

*

 

It’s the last day of school before winter break and finals are just about over, which means that the events committee gets to get out of their last class – it’s two hours long, because they go on block schedule the last three days of every semester – and dress up like Santa and run around handing out the candy canes.

They’re out of Santa costumes by the time Ben shows up. “That’s okay,” says Leslie, adjusting her hat. “You’ll totally fit in the elf suit.” 

Ben has never felt so intensely stupid in his entire life than when he steps out wearing a green felt tunic with curlicues over his shoes and a fucking pointy hat.

Andy is practicing his ho-ho-hos and, well, he actually makes a pretty good Santa. So does Jerry. Everybody else is barely trying. They split up into pairs on Leslie’s suggestion and grab their baskets of candy canes, and Leslie grabs Ben by the arm as everyone else is choosing their partners. “You can be with me,” she says with a grin.

Ben looks at her through his peripherals. “Aren’t you going to be with Ann?” he asks.

“Ann’s gonna be with Tom,” she shrugs. “C’mon, let’s just go.”

They’re running down the hallway together, both holding big baskets of candy canes with their arms linked, and Leslie’s laughing hysterically because Ben keeps tripping over the curly elf points affixed to his shoes with flimsy elastic bands. “Oh, shut up,” he says and she laughs harder as they open the door to Room 303 and walk inside.

“Candy cane delivery!” Leslie chirps, and Mrs. Restrepo waves an arm and tells them to go ahead. They quickly read off the names, Leslie calling them out and Ben tossing the candy cane to the lucky recipient, and when they finish and head out the door,

 

*

 

They finish their basket quickly, because they’ve been expertly sorted and they move fast, so they’re the first to make it back to the now-empty classroom they all met in to begin with. Leslie’s talking a mile a minute and when she takes off her Santa hat, her hair is sticking up from static and it’s really cute. He feels a sudden urge to pat it down and this time he doesn’t think about it, doesn’t rationalize what he wants down to a wimpy compromise. Instead, he just reaches both his hands out and smoothes down the rampant flyaways, sunshine blonde. “Your hair is insane,” he grins. “Static.”

“Ugh, stupid hat,” Leslie says, making a face as she flings said stupid hat across the room. “Is it any better?”

Ben pulls his hands back and gives her a look up and down. “Well, yeah, mostly,” he says. “I did the best I could. It looks like you’re going to make it.”

She laughs brightly, as sunny as her hair. “Thank you so much, Doctor Wyatt,” she says in a mock-serious tone, like someone on one of those stupid hospital dramas Ann likes so much. “How can I ever repay you?”

“I have a few ideas,” Ben grins. And then he falters. “No – shit – I didn’t mean, you know, like that. We were doing a bit, you know? Don’t think I’m one of those guys, because I’m –”

“Calm down!” Leslie is laughing again. “Don’t worry. You’re fine.”

“Good.” Ben bites his lip, and then reaches into his sweater pocket. “Oh, by the way. This was in my basket of candy canes. I didn’t want to, like, embarrass you or anything, so I thought I’d withhold it, you know, and not do it in front of some random class or whatever, because that’s totally weird.” He hands her a candy cane with a note attached. “Who’s it from?”

Leslie’s face is instantly illuminated with something resembling – hope? Joy? Probably just standard-issue teen girl emotions, whatever. “I don’t know,” she says as she takes it from him, reading the note intently. “There’s no name.”

“What does it say?” asks Ben, leaning over to read the note himself. Like he has to. He knows exactly what it says.

Leslie shrugs and reads it aloud. “Leslie – you’re truly amazing. I hope you know that. Signed, a friend.”

“I wonder what it means,” Ben muses. “You have a lot of friends.”

She snorts. “Well, thanks,” she says. “Speaking of. I think I hear someone –”

The classroom door swings open then, and Tom and Ann burst in, arguing loudly about the relative merits of Coldplay. “They write beautiful love songs!” Ann is practically shouting, and Tom looks as if his head’s about to explode, and then they both look over at where Ben and Leslie are sitting and rush over to look at Leslie’s candy cane, and the moment – whatever it meant – is lost.

 

*

  
Christmas is terrible.

It comes the Sunday after the last day of school, and it’s just the worst the holiday has ever gone. Ben gets a check for three hundred dollars from his dad and a check for two hundred fifty dollars from his mom, but at least his mom bothered to enclose hers in a card instead of just opening his checkbook and scrawling it out right there on the spot. They have a tense, quiet family dinner at around two in the afternoon and then Ben escapes to his room, where he opens his laptop and listens to Morrissey to drown out the now-familiar arguing down the hall.

Between songs he hears a door slam, and pauses his iPod quickly. He’d bet money it’s his father. He scrambles over to the window, looks out the blind, and yep, his dad is peeling out of the driveway, looking pissed as usual. Ben rolls his eyes and looks around the room, then, on a whim, pulls a sweater over his plaid button-down and grabs his backpack, shoving his phone into his back pocket and his feet into his shoes.

“Mom?” he calls down the hall. “I’m going for a walk, okay? I’ll be back later.”

She doesn’t answer, which is Wyatt code for “Knock yourself out.” He pulls on his coat and winds his scarf around his neck. He’s not sure where he’s going, but Pawnee isn’t that big. He’ll find somewhere to go.

 

*

 

Where he ends up is Leslie’s house. It’s around five or six when he shows up, and it’s getting much colder out. It’s dark and the lights on all the houses down the street are all aglow but, characteristically, the Knope house shines the brightest. He hesitates on the sidewalk outside, but there are lights on indoors and he can see the blue light of the TV flickering in one of the windows, so he steels his will and starts up the steps to the front porch, and rings the doorbell.

A woman whom he assumes must be Leslie’s mother answers the door. “Can I help you?” she asks, a bit abruptly. 

“Um, yeah,” says Ben, nervous despite himself. “I was wondering if Leslie was around? I’m a friend of hers, from school.”

Mrs. Knope – Mrs. Griggs-Knope, oops, he always forgets despite seeing her name on all the letterheads of the flyers the school board puts in mailboxes around town – gives him a skeptical look. “What’s your name, son?”

“Ben. Um, Ben Wyatt.”

Her face softens when he says that, and all of a sudden she’s smiling. “Oh, of course, honey! Why didn’t you just say that? Leslie’s mentioned you before.” She turns into the house and calls, “Leslie! Ben’s here to see you!” Then, looking him up and down (at his pink cheeks and probably frozen-blue nose), she pats him on the arm and adds, “Why don’t you come in? You look like you just walked through an ice storm.”

“Thanks,” he says awkwardly, and steps inside, unsure of whether Leslie’s mom knows that he’s been inside their house before. He decides to play it safe. “You have a lovely home, Ms. Griggs-Knope.”

She smiles. “Call me Marlene,” she says, but, with a warning look, she adds, “but only when you’re over here.”

“Right. Of course. I’m sorry. I’m… probably just going to call you Ms. Griggs-Knope because it’s easier.”

Leslie, then, appears in the front hallway, wearing pajama pants and a Pawnee High Model UN sweatshirt. “Oh, hey, Ben!” she says, a little skeptically, just like her mother. “What’s – why are you here? It’s Christmas.”

“Ah.” Ben shifts from foot to foot. “It’s… actually kind of a long story. My parents, you know.”

“Oh, right.” She nods quickly, succinctly. _Got it_. “You know, I was just watching It’s a Wonderful Life upstairs, uh. But I’ve seen it a bunch of times. Do you want to hang out or something?”

He takes a shaky breath. “I don’t want to intrude on your, you know, family time or anything –”

Leslie’s mom shakes her head. “Please. I have a whole load of work to catch up on. If you kids want to spend some time together, go right ahead.”

“I know,” Leslie says thoughtfully. “We could take a walk around town and look at all the lights, you know, while they’re all still lit up. If you want to, I mean.”

Ben nods. “That sounds – I’m okay with that. But I’m kind of cold?”

“I’ll make cocoa and we can take it in thermoses,” Leslie says. “Hang on a minute. Let me just go put on real-person clothes, and we’ll be off.” She takes up running back up the stairs, and then it’s just Ben and Leslie’s mom again.

“So,” says Leslie’s mom. “You’re the new kid, huh?”

“Yeah,” Ben says awkwardly. “I just moved here in August, from, ah, Indianapolis.”

“What do your parents do?”

“My dad’s in insurance and my mom’s a dental hygienist. Not very exciting or anything.” He pulls at his backpack straps with both hands. “You’re on the school board?”

“Oh, yeah,” Leslie’s mom laughs. “Just doing my part, you know.”

Ben nods. “That’s cool,” he says. 

It’s just starting to get awkward when Leslie tromps back down the stairs, her checkered pajama pants replaced by a pair of jeans that Ben assumes must have been a Christmas present, since he’s never seen them before. Her hair is pulled back under a grey woolen beret and she’s got a pair of gloves hanging out the pocket of her hoodie. “Okay,” she says by way of announcing her own presence. “Let’s make this cocoa and we’re on our way.”

Twenty minutes later, they’re meandering down Newport Court, several blocks away from Leslie’s house. This is the nice neighborhood, the area where the houses are all ostentatiously decorated, with wooden painted cut-outs of Santa and elves and the Grinch and, at one house, a _spectacularly_ authentic nativity scene. Ben points it out and Leslie rolls her eyes. “That’s the Langmans’ house,” she sighs. “You know, Marcia, from school? The girl who’s always trying to get everybody to come to church with her?”

“Oh, that girl?” Ben says, raising his eyebrows. “She seems harmless enough, I don’t know. Other than that time she caused a fuss in English when she didn’t think we should be reading Catcher in the Rye because of the language…”

“You haven’t known her all your life, though,” Leslie says, bitter as the chilly air around them. “Last year, she tried to get the GSA shut down because she said we were violating her rights to go to school in a space that didn’t insult her religion or something.”

“That… makes no sense,” Ben remarks.

“I know that and you know that, but her parents are both lawyers, you know?” Leslie heaves a sigh as they contemplate the Baby Jesus. “They ended up getting the GSA dance canceled, anyway – the administration said we had to hold it off-campus but we couldn’t use school funds to pay for it, and there’s some kind of loophole in the rules that said we couldn’t hold any kind of fundraiser, either. That’s why the bake sale for homecoming had to be so secretive.”

Ben shakes his head. “That’s awful. And they just… got away with it?”

“You can get away with a lot if you have money in this town,” Leslie shrugs. “The Langmans, the Newports, the Kernstons, the Meagles… I mean, Donna’s really nice, don’t get me wrong, but her family is super rich. They just keep it to themselves instead of throwing money around, trying to get rules bent for them. I love Pawnee, but I don’t love people who think that they deserve special treatment.”

“Is that why you want to stay here after college?”

“Yeah, probably.” Leslie looks up at the sky, and Ben follows her gaze. They can’t see stars; it’s dark and clouded over. “I mean, I want to be a force for good in the world, you know? Make things better for normal people instead. Do things that benefit everybody. I don’t think there’s a better place to start that right here where I grew up.” She realizes, perhaps, what she’s saying, and then giggles. “I’m sorry. I sound like a college essay or something. God, we still have a year left. I don’t have to worry about those yet.”

“Yeah, please don’t,” Ben says dryly. “But I get it. I think that’s… really admirable. I do.”

“Thanks,” she says, and then, “ooh! I love this house – every year, they have all these signs explaining how to say ‘Merry Christmas’ in all these different languages. It’s awesome. Mele Kalikimaka, Ben!”

“Feliz Navidad, Leslie.”

She grins at him, and takes a sip from her thermos. He returns her smile. It’s warm, like cocoa. Like Christmas. Like Leslie.

 

*

 

When he shows up back at his house, chilly but smiling, his dad’s car is still gone from the driveway.

He lets himself into the house, not saying a word. When he walks into the kitchen to get some leftovers from Christmas dinner-lunch, his mother is sitting there in the large, adjacent dining room, parked at the table with a wine goblet in front of her and the bottle beside it.

“Oh,” he says. “Hi. Mom. Merry Christmas.”

She gives him a look that he can’t read. “Did you have a nice time?”

“Yeah, I did, actually,” he says, putting a scoop of mashed potatoes and a bit of ham on his plate. He contemplates microwaving, but decides against it, and instead takes a knife and fork from the silverware drawer and carries it all into the dining room, and sits across from his mother. “I went for a walk with Leslie and we looked at Christmas lights.”

His mother frowns a bit. “Were her parents all right with you taking her away on Christmas?”

“Oh, I talked to her mom. She was okay with it, she had a lot of work.” Ben forks some potatoes into his mouth.

“You and I always used to go out and look at the lights,” she says, giving him a small smile. “Remember those houses back in Indianapolis?”

Ben swallows and nods. “The Disney house, that was the best,” he says, referring to one which always decorated according to the theme of one Disney film or another. The last year they had gone out light-watching, it had been Aladdin. “And the people with the really big tree, kind of over by my middle school, remember?”

“Of course.” His mom smiles again. “You loved that tree.”

He nods, remembering. “Yeah,” he says. “Can I have some wine?”

She gives him a withering look. “You’re sixteen, Benjamin,” she says.

“I know. It was a joke.”

“Oh, go get a glass. Not one of the nice ones.” Ben arches an eyebrow, and his mother shrugs. “Oh, please, Ben. You’re old enough in Europe and besides, I’d rather you do it in the house.” He disappears into the kitchen and returns with one of the cheap wine glasses they bought at Target when they first moved in, and his mom pours him half a glass. He glances at the label. Merlot. From someplace in California called Paso Robles. The name sounds familiar – was it in that movie Sideways? He takes a sip and shrugs.

“It’s okay,” he says, off his mother’s expectant look. “I don’t know.”

She laughs a little. “Not all it’s cracked up to be, huh?” He takes another sip. He doesn’t really like wine; he prefers the stuff he’s had at parties – beer and schnapps and jello shots, and other alcohols mixed into sodas and things. But wine is something that people drink because they appear to be enjoying it, not just because they want to get drunk. He doesn’t really get it, but he senses that he’d like to be the kind of person who drinks for the taste and not just for the after-effects.

He doesn’t say any of this. “I guess it’s just not what I expected,” he says instead. “But it’s okay.”

“If you’re not going to finish it, I will.”

He passes his glass across the table and finishes his ham and potatoes, then goes to back to the fridge and cracks open a Dr Pepper.

When he gets back to his bedroom, he looks at his phone, which he’s been avoiding all day. There’s a whole list of texts from different people, mostly holiday greetings. He types out a quick mass text of his own, then hits ‘send’ just as the clock hits 12:00 a.m., December 26.

He tries to make a list that night, but has trouble thinking of anything he likes other than one certain person. The list goes unfinished.

He has trouble falling asleep that night, but he still doesn’t hear his father come in.

 

*

Winter vacation mostly passes like this. Everyone gets together to hang out at someone’s house a few times a week – Donna’s family is skiing in Utah for the first half of the break, but for the most part, they’re all together. And it’s nice, even though it refuses to snow and there’s not a whole lot else to do when it’s freezing outside and Christmas is over and there’s no snow.

Nonetheless, Ann resolves to have a New Year’s Eve party this year, since her Halloween party didn’t end up happening. “It’d just have to be us,” she stresses. “Nobody else from school or whatever. I just want to have, you know, a small get-together. Pizza and make-your-own sundaes and we can watch the ball drop. Small.”

“I love it,” Chris says from where he’s sitting on the floor, stretching his hamstrings in some kind of pose that strikes Ben as vaguely obscene. “Way to think, Ann Perkins.”

Tom doesn’t look so positive. “Really, though? That’s your suggestion? Make-your-own sundaes and Ryan Seacrest? Wow, you know, I’d rather chew off my own foot ‘cause it’s caught in a bear trap.”

“Really? What’s your idea, then?” Ann says moodily. “T-Pain? Strippers? Strippers dressed like T-Pain?”

“Look, I’m just saying, my dad treated Detlef Schrempf at his clinic three weeks ago. I bet we could get him to come. Maybe Roy Hibbert, too – not makin’ any promises, but yeah.”

“I don’t know who either of those people are,” Ann says. “But I’m pretty sure I don’t want them in my living room.”

Leslie sighs loudly. “Look, I think Ann’s idea is good,” she says. “Just a quiet get-together. They’re having some fireworks in Ramsett Park at midnight. Maybe we could all go over there and watch them. It’d be fun.”

“I agree,” Ben says a little too quickly. But Leslie shoots him a tiny smile anyway.

 

*

 

The party turns out all right. The sundaes are kind of a bust, since Ann’s parents won’t spring for any of the good toppings and they have to settle for, like, fresh fruit and granola, but it’s fun anyway. They play a bunch of stupid party games, Pin the Tail on the Picture of Ann’s Grandpa Hanging in the Living Room and Twister (fully clothed, much to Tom’s protestations) and some kind of weird clapping game that Ben doesn’t really understand. Apparently it’s one of those things you have to have grown up with to really “get,” though Chris seems to be picking it up quickly enough.

At quarter til twelve, they jump in Donna’s car and drive to Ramsett Park, where the fireworks are being set up. Ben is hanging around with Andy and April, and April is talking about how Eraserhead is the best movie ever made and Andy is arguing in favor of Die Hard, and Ben thinks they’re both crazy because clearly the best movie ever made is Shawshank Redemption, or maybe Pulp Fiction? He doesn’t really know which. Anyway, by the time the fireworks start to go off – and, well, chalk another one up to the disappointment side, they’re not even big ones, just, like, leftovers from the Fourth of July – Andy and April are fully making out, and he gets the sense that he’s definitely not wanted.

He glances around. Everybody’s just standing around, part of the crowd. Jerry and Chris are standing near, but not with, each other. Tom and Donna are chatting, ignoring the whole show. Ben spots Leslie and Ann and starts to make a break toward them, but then he glances down and notes that they’re holding hands.

They look – almost – together. In a way that reminds Ben uncomfortably of how he and Leslie were standing on Christmas night, on the sidewalk across from the Langmans’ ostentatious nativity scene.

He chews on his lip, and sidles up to Chris instead.

“Nice display, huh?” he mutters.

Chris grins. “These are literally the best fireworks I’ve ever seen.”

That wasn’t what he meant.

 

*

 

When Ann finally kicks them all out of her house that night, it’s fully two in the morning, a time with which Ben is only acquainted in the sense that he frequently stays up, watching bad old shows on TV Land or Nick at Nite, programs that fade into infomercials after a certain time. He has many, many memories of falling asleep during a Gilligan’s Island or Get Smart rerun and waking up to a commercial for a do-it-your-self at-home colonic. But he’s not really used to being out and about at this time.

His house isn’t really too far away from Ann’s. They live in the same school zone, Leslie informed them at one point; he would have gone to Wamapoke Elementary with Ann had he been raised here while Leslie would have stayed at Pawnee Elementary. So it’s not too far of a drive away. But Jesus, he is really tired.

“I’m sorry,” he yawns. “I’ve been up since like six a.m. I’ve been sleeping really badly lately.”

Ann glances around the living room, unsure. “Well, Leslie’s already sleeping over, on the couch. But you could probably sleep on the floor.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, hang on. Let me just go ask my parents.” Ann disappears into the house, then returns with an armful of pillows and blankets a few minutes later. “They said yes, but they also said no hanky-panky of any kind, and they’re really strict about this stuff. So, I mean, I know you guys aren’t like – into each other, or anything, but just a warning, okay?”

Ben takes the bedding from her and sets it on the floor beside the couch. “God, thank you so much, Ann. You’re a lifesaver.”

“No problem,” she says with a yawn. “‘Kay, I am super exhausted. I’ll see you guys in the morning, okay?”

“Okay,” they chorus as she leaves the room. Leslie is sitting cross-legged on the couch, half-covered by the Perkins’ TV blanket, wearing her Model UN hoodie again with the signatures of last year’s whole team all over the sleeves. Ben does his best not to look at her as he sets down the pillows and the blankets in the middle of the floor, trying his best to create some sort of bed. The carpet is soft, but it’s not that soft. 

“You want any of the cushions from up here?” Leslie asks. He glances up and wonders if she’s been watching him go the entire time.

“No,” he says, “but thanks. That’s okay, though.”

“Okay.” She falls silent again, and then adds, “I mean, it really wouldn’t be a big deal. Or we could switch, even. I’m okay with sleeping on the floor.”

Ben bites his tongue. “I’m really okay, Leslie,” he says. He eases himself down onto the floor and pulls the blanket over him, then sighs and closes his eyes, willing sleep to come to him quickly tonight. It never does, of course. No matter how exhausted he is, it seems like he just can’t turn off his brain and his body long enough to get any meaningful amount of sleep, and it always takes him so fucking long to do it. 

Leslie hops off the couch and pads across the room, and turns the living room lights off. It’s quiet, and outside they can hear people still setting off the odd firecracker down the street and outside. She retakes her position on the couch, lies down on her side. Ben is turned away from her, but can see her reflection in the TV screen. 

Ann’s living room is foreign like this. There’s a ticking in the background that Ben recognizes as the noise of a grandfather clock that’s apparently some kind of family heirloom (an “Ann-tique,” as Leslie put it), and the house glows in strange places from unexpected digital readouts on DVD players and such. The Perkinses keep their Christmas tree up until the New Year. The room smells of pine.

“Ben?” Leslie’s voice comes through the darkness and it sounds – different, somehow. 

He swallows before he answers. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. You’ve been acting weird tonight. Ever since the fireworks.”

“I’m not acting weird.”

“Yeah, you are.” Her voice sounds less patient than usual. “I don’t get it. For the past few weeks, it’s been, like, you’re always really nice to me, and we talk all the time and hang out all the time –”

“Not all the time.” 

“What?”

“We don’t hang out all the time. You and Ann hang out all the time. We hang out when Ann is busy,” Ben says, his frustration boiling over. He knows, in some capacity, that he’s going to regret this, but fuck it. He’s going to say it anyway. “I just feel like, I don’t know. Like I’ve been making you a priority but you only consider me an option.”

Leslie doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then she says, quietly, “Ben, you know I make all my friends my priorities.”

“But Ann is number one.”

“Of course Ann is number one! We’ve been best friends since pre-K! Andy –”

“I know, I know, Andy fell off a slide and broke his arm and you two were traumatized and you had to go to the office together and you became best friends. I know, Leslie. Everyone does.”

“God, Ben, you don’t get it, do you? Ann is my best friend. I’ve only known you for a few months.” She heaves a sigh, sits up, shaking her head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous or something.”

Ben doesn’t say anything. Suddenly, he’s afraid that this says everything.

“… Ben?”

He stays on the floor, his back to her, watching her reflection in the TV screen still. “I… guess I am,” he says in a very small voice.

She doesn’t say anything.

Neither does he.

Finally, he sits up. He still doesn’t turn to look at her, but instead, scoots across the floor so that his back is against the bottom part of the couch. He props his legs up in front of him and rests his hands on his knees. 

“I like you,” Leslie finally says, and, well, it’s out there. They can’t turn around after this. No putting it in reverse. Leslie has just slammed her foot on the gas and driven right off a cliff.

And Ben doesn’t know what to say. Because Leslie has just said the words he’s been fighting with himself over for months now. He knows he owes it to her, on some level, to be truthful. She’s been honest with him. It’s the least he can do. But he can’t say it to her face. He can’t turn around and tell her because it would take more balls than he has at this particular moment.

But he can say it to the darkness and he can say it to the carpet on Ann’s living room floor. So he digs one of his thumbnails into the skin on the pad of his index finger and stares at the floor and says, quietly, “I like you too.”

“So I wasn’t the only one?”

The question is so plaintive – so honest – that it knocks the air out from inside him, and suddenly he’s biting back a giggle. “No,” he murmurs. “You weren’t… the only one.”

“So we both… like each other. In that way.”

But it isn’t that easy. And they both know it.

Ben sighs. He has to spit it out. Whether he likes it or not, he has to know. “What about you and Ann?” he asks, quietly.

Leslie shifts where she’s sitting on the couch, visibly uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” she says in a very small voice. “I like Ann, too.”

“Are you two – you know. Girlfriends?”

She bites her lip. “I mean, we’re not in a relationship. So technically, no.”

“Then what’s your deal?”

“It’s really complicated.” Her eyes flicker back and forth across the room, giving off the impression of a small animal trapped in a cage. “I mean, it’s like… we don’t have a ‘normal’ friendship, quote-unquote, whatever that means. I like her and I know she likes me, but we always said we didn’t want to make it a big thing between us. It’s just, you know, a thing. A thing that’s complicated.”

“Do you love her?”

Leslie takes a short breath in. “I love her as a friend,” she says. “And she means the world to me. She’s my best friend. Beyond that… I don’t know.”

Ben’s stomach is sinking as he leans his head back against the seat of the couch. “Okay,” he says, without knowing what he’s saying. The words don’t seem to have any meaning. He stares at the ceiling, up into the dark. “That’s okay.”

Leslie shifts. He doesn’t want to look at her. “Ben,” she murmurs, so quietly it’s barely a whisper.

“What?” he asks.

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she shifts next to him again, and sits up on her knees so that she’s hovering right above him. Their eyes are level when he meets her gaze, and she puts a palm on both of his cheeks.

Ben knows what’s about to happen before it happens, and he closes his eyes and tilts his head up like he was born ready. When their lips meet, he kisses Leslie, ever so softly, like it’s all he’s ever lived for.

Leslie doesn’t have any of that shit. She pulls on Ben’s bottom lip with the pad of her thumb, opens him up and kisses him deep, with the kind of ownership a boy usually thinks he has over a girl. She keeps her hands on either side of his jaw and when she’s had enough she pulls away and gives him a sly smile, keeping a few of her fingers on the nape of his neck.

“Hi,” she says quietly, her lips so close to his.

“Hi,” he says. Her hand is hot on his neck and he realizes suddenly that his own hands feel heavy at his sides, and what the fuck does he do with them now? He’s completely forgotten.

“Is that the kind of thing you were talking about before?” she asks very seriously. He nods. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s exactly it.”

She giggles a little and moves in closer to him again, lets her lips brush against his, and this time he kisses her harder and it's like he's falling into an abyss but it's perfect and he's never wanted anything more than he wants to keep kissing Leslie until he, like, _dies_ or gets hungry or whatever comes first.

And this is precisely when Ann’s mom flips on the light.


	5. the sad montage part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where do you go after a kiss? Good question. There is no answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY SORRY SORRY! This is really short compared to previous chapters and also it's been forever since I last updated - I've been busy with life and original writing projects. Hoping to get back into this one - I definitely haven't abandoned it!

This is the status of things:

It is January 7th. They haven’t spoken since New Year’s.

Ben has no idea what the fuck is going on anymore.

 

*

 

“What is your problem?”

Leslie yanks open her locker door and tosses her pre-calc book inside. “Nothing,” she mutters. “I’ve been busy. I have other friends, you know.”

Ben sighs and crosses his arms and shakes his head. “I just don’t really get it,” he says. “I thought we were, like, getting somewhere. I thought we –”

“Well, you thought wrong,” Leslie says shortly as she yanks out her English binder and slams the locker shut. “See you at Model UN.”

She turns and stalks off, her binder clutched under one arm and her backpack hanging off one shoulder haphazardly, and Ben watches her go with a sigh.

The past week hasn’t been good. She’s been ignoring his calls ever since they both got kicked out of Ann’s house at 3 a.m. on New Year’s Day. Ben had even offered to drive her home so she wouldn’t have to call her mom (because Leslie’s mom won’t buy her a car even though she’s had her license since the first day she was eligible for the test) but she refused and now, apparently, she’s not talking to him at all.

So he’s dealing with it. He’s hanging out with Chris a lot, even though Chris can be kind of exhausting to be around after a while. They spent most of the rest of break at the batting cages, and Ben’s thinking of going out for the baseball team in the spring. Chris doesn’t ask him about Leslie, though he does talk about Ann a lot. It’s fine. Whatever. He’ll deal with it.

In chem that afternoon he pays zero attention to the lesson. He flips to a fresh page in his notebook and makes a list:

LESLIE: PROS AND CONS

PRO: She’s nice.  
CON: She’s not being nice right now.  
PRO: Pretty.  
CON: What’s her deal?  
PRO: Funny.  
CON: In love with her best friend.  
PRO: Good at lots of things.  
CON: Hates me???  
PRO: We get along?  
CON: Not anymore.  
PRO: Seriously what’s her deal.  
CON: All I did was tell her the truth.  
This is so stupid.  
Not my fault.  
Everything sucks.  
FML.

He stares at the page and heaves a sigh.

“Ben?”

He glances up at the board. Mrs. Restrepo is looking at him expectantly. “Sorry, what’s the question?”

The class titters and his face flushes. Mrs. Restrepo repeats the question and he quickly answers – it’s carbon, the answer is always carbon – and ducks his head back down and avoids everyone’s stares. Everything sucks.

 

*

 

When he walks into Model UN practice that afternoon, he sees that Mr. Swanson is in a predictably foul mood. He slides into the seat next to Leslie, who retaliates by moving one seat over.

Fine. Two can play at this.

Mr. Swanson announces that today’s practice will be a free period due to his lack of motivation, and when everybody starts milling about to discuss their position papers, Ben opens his binder and scrawls a note on a blank sheet of paper – _Why aren’t you returning my calls?_ He slides it over to Leslie, who skims it before turning back to Ben and mouthing “Busy.”

He rolls his eyes. “That’s not a real answer,” he mutters, flipping to a new sheet of paper and pretending to take some notes. “Are you mad at me or something?”

“Ding ding ding!” Leslie’s voice is low and sarcastic as she folds Ben’s note into an elaborate paper airplane and hurls it across the room, away from him. “Congratulations, you win.”

Ben has had enough. “Leslie, can I please talk to you outside?”

She gives him a scathing look. “If it’ll get you off my ass. Fine. Whatever.”

They slip out of the classroom door and stand in the hallway, which is eerily quiet. Ben can hear the hubbub of the meeting going on inside but nothing else. It’s hot and stuffy and he buries his hands in his sweatshirt pockets anyway, as Leslie leans against a locker and avoids his eye. Neither wants to be the first to speak. It’s a Mexican stand-off of awkwardness.

Finally Ben bites his lip and mumbles, “Um, look. I don’t know what I did. But I’m sorry.”

Leslie snorts, still not meeting his eye contact. “Yeah, okay.”

“God, Leslie, will you just – explain all this? Please? I don’t get it. I really don’t.”

She stares down at the floor, breathing calmly and deeply. “Okay,” she says simply. “Here’s the explanation. When I had to call my mom to pick me up from Ann’s house because we got thrown out for kissing when we were supposed to be sleeping, I got in serious trouble. Like, serious trouble. Like, grounded-for-six-months-and-no-car-until-I-graduate trouble. My mom’s really strict with me, okay? She thinks that because my dad’s not around, I’m at risk of becoming some, I don’t know, wanton trollop who fucks any guy who gives her the time of day. So she’s basically never let me do anything, and just when she was starting to ease up and allow me to have more of a life, this happened. So yeah, Ben, the reason I’m not returning your calls is that I don’t actually have a phone right now. My mom took it because she thought I was _sexting_.”

Ben doesn’t know what to say to this.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” She crosses her arms and tucks her hands inside her sleeves and looks very, very small. “I know your parents don’t really care what you do, but some of us don’t have that luxury.”

“Leslie, I’m sorry.”

“Well, I am too. Sorry we even got into this mess.”

“What about you and Ann? Are you guys still, like –” He doesn’t know what to say because he still doesn’t really know what their deal is. “Friends?”

She laughs shortly, derisively. “Well, as far as I know. She’s mad at me but at least I’m still allowed to see her, so there’s that. Not that I’m allowed in her house anymore, because her parents are just as strict as my mom. So basically, everything’s totally screwed up because of one stupid kiss.”

“Do you regret it?”

Ben wishes he could take back the words as soon as they leave his mouth. He watches Leslie as she reacts, as if in slow motion – the widening of her eyes, the parting of her lips, the way she brushes her hair from her forehead as she stalls, grasping at time, trying to find something, anything to say. And then she says it:

“No. Not really.”

And if this were a movie he would kiss her again right there, grabbing her hands and pinning them above her head against the lockers behind her, and she’d groan something into his mouth and kiss him back, intense, hot and sweet and perfect just like the first time and some awesome song would play and the camera would back away at the speed of their hearts until it faded into black-and-white. And it would be perfect. But Ben Wyatt’s life is not a movie, and instead he just fiddles with the zipper on his sweatshirt and says nothing.

 

*

 

January mostly passes in this fashion. He goes to Model UN practice and batting practice with Chris and jogs himself into exhaustion on the track, outside in the freezing cold. He goes to the pizza place downtown and orders a calzone and sits in the back booth, eating it slowly and doing his APUSH homework. In the evenings he drives around aimlessly, blasting music and watching the sunset over the flat cornfields on the edge of town and wishing he lived someplace with mountains or beaches or forests or anything but the flat, endless nothingness of Indiana. He avoids going home as much as possible. His dad is pretty much entirely moved out by now, to a condo on the other side of town, and his mom is rarely home. He doesn’t know where she goes and he doesn’t particularly want to know, either.

On Fridays he still plays video games with Andy, but April has started to join them more and more frequently, and more often than not they end up abandoning the game and just doing whatever. Which is fine. It doesn’t really matter. Ben’s not that good at video games anyway.

Usually it ends with April and Andy making out and Ben taking that as his cue to leave. 

 

*

 

“Are you staying after school today?” Chris asks.

Ben is rummaging through his locker, trying to figure out what the fuck happened to the copy of _On The Road_ that he took out of the library two days earlier. He isn’t even a messy person or anything, so it should definitely be there, but maybe it fell out of his backpack earlier or something, because it definitely isn’t there now. He shrugs. “For what?”

“Dance committee,” Chris says. “The Valentine’s dance is coming up in about a month. Got a lot of stuff to work on.”

Shit. He’d totally forgotten. He usually tries to forget about Valentine’s Day in general, but has trouble on account of his birthday being the day before. It’s a stupid, commercialized holiday and he doesn’t even like the idea of it but every year he manages to get a little depressed about not having a girlfriend on that day anyway. Ben heaves a sigh and closes his locker, officially declaring the paperback a Lost Cause. His life is full of lost causes these days. 

“Probably not,” he says. “I’ve got a lot of stuff going on. You know. Homework. APs.” Chris nods, smiles, all knowingly and shit. “I’ll tell Leslie that you’ll be there next week, though.”

“No, don’t.” He knows he sounds short but he can’t really stop himself. “It’s just, you know – I’m busy. I wish I could participate more, but I really can’t.” He shoulders his backpack and digs into his pocket, pulls out his phone and checks it for messages more out of habit than anything else. Nothing. 

 

*

 

April is contemplating the breading on her chicken patty sandwich when Ben and Andy plop down beside her; Andy to her immediate right and Ben on Andy’s right. Andy’s got the usual, a Frito boat and two chocolate milks, and Ben’s got a sack lunch, and he feels super nerdy to be bringing his own lunch to school this far into the year but his mom packed it this morning and he’d feel bad not taking it, so he did. April raises an eyebrow as he opens the bag and pulls out a sandwich – prosciutto and truffle mayo on a torta roll – a clementine, and a big thing of pretzel sticks. 

“It’s my mom,” he clarifies. “She’s kind of going through some stuff.”

“Yeah, whatever,” says April, and she takes half of his sandwich and stuffs it into her mouth before he can protest. He doesn’t say anything anyway.

 

*

 

He still thinks about Leslie. Like, a lot.

He sees her at school in homeroom every morning and she and Ann seem to be closer than ever. Near the end of the month he walks in late and gets a good look at the two of them – Ann’s leaning back in her chair and Leslie’s leaning forward over her desk, braiding Ann’s hair in some style he doesn’t understand, and they’re whispering or maybe just talking very, very quietly, and then Ann suddenly says something and Leslie throws her head back and laughs hard. They don’t notice him until he slides down into his seat in front of them, and then Ann suddenly sits up and Leslie stiffens and they both shut up.

He wonders if Ann’s taken his place entirely. If she’s the last person Leslie thinks about at night and the first person she texts when she wakes up. If they have secret handshakes (oh, they probably do) and code names for people they don’t like. He imagines Leslie making a game of trying to kiss all of Ann’s freckles and his stomach tightens (and he hates that he’s turned on a little bit) and he thinks about how Ann is nice to everyone but she’s only really effusively nice around Leslie and he hates that he doesn’t know any of this for sure. 

He wonders if Ann’s taken his place, or if he even had a place to start with. It makes his stomach twist and tighten even more when he realizes that he probably never did.


End file.
